Some famous singers of the 19th century

SOME FAMOUS SINGERS
OF THE XIXIH CENTURY

Francis Rogers

SITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES

MANUEL GARCIA
1775-1832

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SOME FAMOUS
SINGERS of the
19th CENTURY

By FRANCIS ROGERS

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I

THE H. W. GRAY COMPANY

2 West Forty-fifth Street, New York
Sole agents for NOVELLO & CO., Ltd.

Copyright, 1914, by The H.W. Gray Co.
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW

LIBSARV

■Rtos
Contents

The Two Manuel Garcias .... i
4g Manuel Garcia (father)

qJ, Manuel Garcia (son)

Maria and Pauline Garcia .... 15

Maria Garcia
Pauline Garcia

Catalani and Pasta 31

Angelica Catalani
Giuditta Negri Pasta

Luigi Lablache 46

Three Tenors 55

Giovanni Battista Rubini
Adolphe Nourrit
Gilbert Duprez

SONTAG AND LlND 73

Henriette Sontag
Jenny Lind

i Grisi, Mario and Tamburini ... 94

v Giulia Grisi

Mario de Candia
ft- Antonio Tamburini

Some Conclusions in

Z5I)£ X3wo Mlanuel (Barcias

MANUEL GARCIA (FATHER), 1775-1832
MANUEL GARCIA (SON), 1805-1906

HE name of Garcia is written large
in the history of song. From 1808,
when the first Manuel Garcia made
his debut in Paris, till the death of
the second Manuel in 1906, these two men ex-
erted directly a potent influence on the art of
singing, the former as singer and teacher, the
latter as teacher. In addition, Maria Garcia
(better known to us under her married name,
Malibran) and Pauline Viardot-Garcia, daugh-
ters of Manuel, Senior, and sisters of Manuel,
Junior, had brilliant operatic careers, and
Pauline achieved also success as a teacher.

It is of great interest to us lovers of sing-
ing to recall the lives of these four astonishing
Spaniards, and to see how they, in especial
the father and the son, transmitted the tenets
and traditions of the golden age of Italian bel
canto even down to this very day and hour.
Indeed, we shall not be far from the literal
truth if we call Manuel Garcia, Senior, "the
father of modern singing."
1

2 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Manuel del Popolo Vicente Rodriguez, only
known to us under his stage name of Manuel
Garcia, was born in Seville in 1775. He
began his career as a singer, at the age of six,
as chorister in the Cathedral, and must, even
as a child, have shown the remarkable quali-
ties of energy and musical talent that distin-
guished him in later years, for by the time he
was seventeen he was already well known as
singer, actor, composer and conductor, and his
musical pieces, mostly operettas, were popu-
lar all over Spain.

Opportunities for musical study in Seville
must have been extremely meager (there was
not one pianoforte in that city in 1775), but
young Garcia took advantage of whatever
facilities for education he could find, and in
1792 made his operatic debut in Cadix. His
voice, already a tenor of good quality, prom-
ised much better things for the future, but his
acting gave slight indication of his future pro-
ficiency in this branch of his art. His next
engagement was in Madrid, where he made a
great hit in an operetta of his own, "El Poeta
Calculista," in the course of which he intro-
duced, with soul-stirring effect, to the accom-
paniment of his own guitar, a popular national
song called "A Smuggler am I."

For a number of years Garcia contented
himself with the laurels to be won in his own
country, but his ambitions reached far be-

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS 3

yond the Pyrenees. In the first years of the
nineteenth century artistic life in Spain suf-
fered grievously by reason of the French in-
vasion, while Paris was the most brilliant and,
outwardly at least, the most prosperous capi-
tal in Europe. In 1808 Garcia signed an en-
gagement to sing at the Theatre Italien in
Paris. The fact that he had never sung in
Italian did not daunt him, and in February of
that year he made his entree in the now-
forgotten opera of "Griselda," by Paer. His
success was immediate. His vivacity and fire
carried all before them, distracting attention
from his weaknesses as actor and musician and
the inequalities of his voice. His inborn ani-
mation was infectious and aroused everybody
within reach of his dynamic personality.
Garat, a famous old French singer, spoke for
all Paris when he said, "I love the Andalusian
frenzy of the man. He puts life into every-
thing about him."

He stayed two years in Paris and then went
to Italy, where, after successful appearances
in Turin and Rome, he settled in Naples.
Murat, then in supreme power, made him lead-
ing tenor in the choir of his private chapel, a
position of some importance. Garcia now, for
the first time in his life, had the chance to
acquire a sound musical training, and went
zealously to work to overcome the defects in
his early education. He also took up the study

4 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

of voice emission under Anzani, a distin-
guished tenor, who was an able exponent of
the old Italian school of singing, and may
possibly have been a pupil in his early youth
of the greatest of all teachers, Niccolo Porpora
(1686-1766). By great good fortune, young
Rossini was in Naples at the same time and
was quick to recognize in Garcia the qualities
he needed for the proper interpretation of his
music. He wrote at once a part for him in his
opera "Elisabetta," and a little later the part
of Almaviva in "II Barbiere di Siviglia."
Garcia's star rose together with Rossini's;
Rossini was the new deity among operatic
composers, and Garcia was his prophet.

An anecdote characteristic of Garcia's self-
assurance, not to say spirit of bravado, is told
in connection with his arrival in Naples. At
his first rehearsal there with orchestra, in
order to make an instant and vivid impression
on the musicians, he began his opening air a
half-tone higher than they were playing the
accompaniment and held his pitch, without
deviation, through to the end. The or-
chestra thought at first that he had made
a bad entrance, but when they discovered that
he had performed successfully a difficult feat
of musicianship they gave him a hearty round
of applause.

In 1816 Garcia returned to Paris as first
tenor in the troupe of Catalani, one of the

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS 5

most brilliant of prima donnas. The Parisians
remarked at once the great progress he had
made as actor and singer since they had last
heard him, and straightway rated him as the
first tenor of the day. With consistent suc-
cess he sang in all the operas of the current
repertory, in Mozart and Rossini, as well as
in operas that survive now as names only;
but Catalani, who was never disposed to share
her triumphs with other singers, made his po-
sition so intolerable that he finally broke his
contract and went to London.

In London he sang in "II Barbiere" and
other operas with Fodor, an excellent French
soprano, and was most cordially received; but
he soon returned to Paris, where, in 1819, he
created a furore by his production of
Rossini's charming masterpiece. He spent the
greater part of the next five years in Paris,
singing, and establishing a school for singing
which achieved immediate popularity. In
1823 he returned to London for the opera
season, and accepted pupils there as he had
done in Paris.

The period between 1820 and 1825 marks
the very zenith of Garcia's career. In both
Paris and London he was held in the highest
honor both as artist and teacher. In four
roles he was considered to be without a
rival — Almaviva, Tancredi, Otello (Ros-
sini) and Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni,

6 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

though written for a baritone voice, was one
of his greatest impersonations, although it is
hard to understand how a tenor voice could
possibly encompass music of such low
tessitura. In 1825, the fiftieth year of his life,
the season in London, in the course of which
he produced and sang in two of his own operas,
brought him the very large salary (for those
days) of £1,250.

In the autumn of the same year he was
able to realize a project that had long been
in his mind. Some time in the month of Sep-
tember he set sail for New York with a com-
pany of singers which included his wife, his
son, his daughter Maria and four other sing-
ers of no great celebrity. His coming was an
epoch-making event in the musical history of
our country, for although performances of
light opera in English were more or less popu-
lar, and New Orleans had for a number of
years supported a fairly good French light
opera company, the real beginning of opera
in the United States was made by Garcia and
his troupe. An anonymous newspaper writer
of the day hailed Garcia as "Our musical
Columbus" !

According to European standards, the little
band of singers was not a remarkable one —
except for Garcia himself and his daughter,
there were no great artists among them — but
it was quite strong enough to impress favor-

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS 7

ably the thoroughly inexperienced public of
provincial New York.

The season opened November 29, 1825, at
the Park Theatre,* with "II Barbiere di
Siviglia." To make the performance even
possible required a manager and a musician
of extraordinary qualities. Both the chorus
and the orchestra had to be selected from local
musicians, who knew nothing about Italian
opera or the Italian language, and drilled to at
least a decent degree of proficiency. But
Garcia was equal to the task and carried the
memorable evening through without notable
mishap and to the manifest pleasure of the
public. The elite of New York was there,
including James Fenimore Cooper and Fitz-
Greene Halleck, the author of "Marco Boz-
zaris" ; also Joseph Bonaparte, the ex-King of
Spain. The first performance of real opera in
New York was voted a great success.

During the next ten months seventy-nine
performances of a dozen operas were given
before responsive and encouragingly large au-
diences. That the public was considerably
puzzled by some of the incongruities and ab-
surdities of Italian opera is proved by the
newspaper comments of the day; but, on the
whole, it was open-minded and quite ready to
follow, more or less blindly, the musical taste

*The Park Theatre stood in Park Row, opposite
the site of the present Post-Office.

8 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

of Europe until it could develop some intelli-
gent taste of its own. Garcia must have
thought our ancestors for the most part a
horde of benighted barbarians, so far as music
was concerned; but he found a few Ameri-
cans who had traveled and imbibed a love of
art in Europe, and, in addition, a fair-sized
colony of Europeans who could discriminate
between good and bad in music. Of these
latter the most noteworthy was old Lorenzo
da Ponte, an Italian poet, who many years be-
fore had written the librettos for Mozart's
"Cosi fan tutti," "Le Nozze di Figaro" and
"Don Giovanni." He and Garcia had never
met in Europe, but at their first meeting in
New York they embraced enthusiastically and
danced about the room, singing at the top of
their lungs the "champagne song" from "Don
Giovanni."

The total receipts of the season were about
$56,000 — a goodly sum for those days — and
Garcia was tempted to prolong his stay in New
York, but he finally abandoned the idea, and
in the fall of 1826 left for Mexico. He took
all his troupe with him, except his daughter,
who had married a French merchant named
Malibran, whose business was in New York.

The journey from New York to Mexico
City ninety years ago was a long and diffi-
cult one, but Garcia accomplished it in the
course of a few weeks and arrived in the capi-

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS 9

tal ready, as he supposed, for business. But,
on overhauling his luggage, he found that
somehow and somewhere all his music had
been lost. The first performance was near at
hand and there was no source from which he
could replace the missing scores. Most im-
presarios would have sat down and torn their
hair, but Garcia was made of different stuff —
he sat down and did not rise till he had him-
self written out from memory all the neces-
sary parts for the first opera, "Don Giovanni."
Later he repeated the feat with other operas,
besides writing and producing several operas
of his own and translating all the Italian texts
into Spanish. I doubt if even Toscanini could
do this and, in addition, sing leading tenor
roles !

Despite the raging of a political tempest
among the Mexicans, the season was a re-
munerative one, and at its close Garcia and
his colleagues left for Vera Cruz, where they
were to embark for Europe, laden with the
financial reward for their hard work, but they
had not gone far when they were intercepted
by brigands and despoiled of everything of
value, amounting to some $30,000.

Garcia finally reached Paris and resumed
his career, but his voice was no longer trust-
worthy, and after a few performances of some
of his most famous parts he gave up the stage
altogether and devoted himself to teaching.
He died in Paris in 1832.

IO SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Garcia was not a lovable man. His auto-
cratic will and his fiery, domineering temper
won for him respect, but not affection. Even
his children he ruled by fear rather than love,
and many are the tales of his relentless treat-
ment of them and of those that came in close
contact with him. One legend has it that the
passers-by often would hear the sound of
weeping issuing from Garcia's house. If they
inquired the cause, the neighbors would tell
them, "Oh, that's nothing. It's only Mr.
Garcia teaching his pupils how to sing."

No singer ever had so full a life as he, or
possessed such a combination of talent, energy,
resource and will. He was a brilliant rather
than a moving singer, and, at a time when
ornamentation in singing was highly esteemed,
excelled all other singers in the ease and se-
curity with which he invented and executed
the most difficult ornaments. As a New York
critic put it: "He is not at home in the simple
melodies of Mozart. He must have a wide
field for display; he must have ample room
to verge enough for unlimited curvetings and
flourishes."

His musicianship was extraordinarily fine
for a singer. In the course of his career, he
wrote some forty operas, none of which sur-
vived his own day, but which amply attest his
musical facility and technical skill in compo-
sition.

Copyright 1905, Photographisehe Gesellschaft
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., New York.

MANUEL GARCIA (SON)

1805-1906
From tin: Sargent Portrait

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS II

His singing and sound musicianship were
greatly reinforced by his unusual skill as an
actor. His vivacity and dash in comedy and
his fire and intensity in tragedy were irre-
sistible. With such a multiplicity of gifts, it
is not surprising that he should have been con-
sidered the finest tenor of his time. The male
soprano had been the predominant operatic
figure of the eighteenth century, but when
Rossini was writing his early operas he found
about him a number of excellent tenors, for
whom he wrote his leading parts, and this
combination of circumstances resulted in a
change of public taste and the speedy and com-
plete obliteration from the operatic stage of
the male soprano. Garcia, by right of his
artistic qualities, was the first of the line of
great tenors whose sway has endured undis-
puted to the present day.

Manuel Garcia, the younger, was born in
Zafra, Catalonia, in 1805, and died in'London
in 1906. As his long life covered practically
the entire nineteenth .century, and as he was
intimately connected with singing in all its
branches from the cradle to the grave, his
century-long career is an interesting one,
though in no way spectacular.

From the very first his father was deter-
mined to make a singer of him, and gave him
indefatigably the benefit of his own great
artistry and experience. The boy was with

12 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

his father constantly during the first twenty
years of his life, and if anything could have
made a great singer of him, this association
certainly would have done so ; but Nature had
given him neither a remarkable voice nor an
aptitude for the stage, although hcwas an ex-
cellent musician by instinct, as well as by
training. His bent was decidedly for the
tranquil life of the teacher and for scientific
research.

He accompanied his father to New York,
and sang constantly during that long and
arduous season. His voice was a rather high
baritone, but, in addition to his own roles, he
would often have to sing such heavy parts as
Leporello in "Don Giovanni," and also to sub-
stitute for his father, a tenor, in time of need.
But his distaste for the career was deep-
seated, and at the age of twenty-five, after
his return to Europe, he abandoned it alto-
gether, much to the elder Garcia's disgust, in
order to devote himself to the work he so
heartily loved and for which he was so well
qualified.

In 1829 he received an appointment to teach
singing in the Paris Conservatory. During
the ensuing years he made a profound scien-
tific study of everything that pertains to the
emission of the human voice, the results of
which he published in several authoritative
treatises. In 1848 he moved to London, which

THE TWO MANUEL GARCIAS 1 3

he made his home during the remaining fifty-
eight years of his life.

In 1854 he gave to the world his invention,
the laryngoscope, which has thrown much
light on the vocal processes and has been of in-
estimable value in medical practice. At first
it was thought that the laryngoscope would
have a beneficial effect on the art of singing,
but even Garcia himself soon discovered that
it was useful to him only in confirming the ac-
curacy of certain theories that he, in common
with many other good teachers before him,
had long held to be true. As a matter of fact,
the discovery of the laryngoscope has probably
been a detriment to the art of singing, because
it was the origin of the school of teaching that
believes, erroneously, that the human voice is,
after all, only a piece of ingenious mechanism,
susceptible of development and control by
purely physiological methods.

Garcia was unquestionably the greatest
teacher of the nineteenth century. His sister,
Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Jenny Lind, Johanna
Wagner (a niece of Richard), Mathilde
Marchesi, Stockhausen, Santley, Marie Tem-
pest and a host of others scarcely less re-
nowned were proud to call him master. As
he grew older and taught less assiduously, his
famous pupils, Marchesi and Stockhausen,
were training according to his methods many
of the singers who, like Melba and Eames and

14 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Van Rooy, are great figures in the world
of song to-day.

On his hundredth birthday the sovereigns
of Spain, England and Germany sent deco-
rations and encomiastic messages to him, and
his admirers in London, including many peo-
ple great in the medical and the musical
worlds, gave him a banquet and presented him
with a portrait of himself painted by Sargent.
A year later he died.

Garcia's services to the art of singing were
inestimable. Inheriting from his father the
methods and principles of the old Italian
school of bel canto, he was able to add to them
the fruits of his own astonishingly long expe-
rience, and to pass them on by word of mouth
to the students of the beginning of the twen-
tieth century.

3ttaria an6 Jpauline (Barcia

MARIA (MME. MALIBRAN), 1808-1836
PAULINE (MME. VIARDOT), 1821-1910

||

HAVE called Manuel Garcia,
Senior, "the father of modern
singing ;" he was also the progenitor
of two daughters, Maria and Paul-
ine, who had operatic careers of exceptional
brilliancy and wrote their names indelibly in
the Golden Book of Singers. From their
father they inherited musical and dramatic in-
stincts of the highest order; from him, too,
they derived a comprehensive and sound
musical education, as well as love and rever-
ence for their art. All these they possessed in
common, but disparity in age, temperament and
conditions of life led them into dissimilar
paths and accounts for the unlike memories
they left behind them.

Maria was born in Paris in 1808, a few
weeks after her father's arrival from Spain.
Three years later he took her with him to
Naples, and when she was only five years
old gave her a child's part to play in Paer's
15

l6 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

"Agnese." In this case the child was certainly
mother to the woman, for one night, during
a performance, the little creature began of her
own accord to sing a third part to a duet, much
to the surprise and delight of the audience. As
a mere infant, she spoke French, Spanish and
Italian with complete ease, and a few years
later became equally mistress of English and
German. (Although purely of Spanish blood,
she always considered herself a French
woman.) Garcia had her taught the piano
and musical theory under the best masters,
and by the time she was eleven she could play
to him all the piano music of Bach, for which
he had a strong liking.

With all her extraordinary aptitude for
learning and a loving and lovable nature, she
was hot-tempered, impatient of discipline and
indolent. Her father, with characteristic zeal
and persistence, undertook to overcome these
weaknesses in her make-up, in order to bring
her great talents to their fullest possible de-
velopment. To subdue and educate so strong-
willed a child was an arduous task and produc-
tive of much suffering for the child, but
Garcia's will was indomitable, and in later
years Maria admitted freely that without her
father's stern discipline she never could have
become famous.

At the age of fifteen she began her vocal
studies under her father, an incomparable

MARIA FELICITA MALIBRAN
1808-1836

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 1/

master. There was much to do, because her
ear had never been accurate and her voice was
in some ways defective, but a year later, in
1824, Garcia felt that she was ready for a
public hearing. Her first appearance before
an audience was at a concert given in Paris
by a musical club under the direction of the
lion of the hour, Garcia's friend, Rossini. She
did credit to her father's teaching and was
received cordially, but made no profound im-
pression on her hearers.

A few months later she was with her father
in London. Owing to the sickness of an im-
portant singer at the opera, it was necessary
to find at short notice a substitute to sing the
part of Rosina in "II Barbiere di Siviglia."
This was Maria's opportunity and she seized it.
June 7, 1825, she made her operatic debut. Her
success was immediate and decidedly encour-
aging. Her youthful charm, fresh voice and
easy, spontaneous action were most winning,
although there were, of course, imperfections
in her performance. On the strength of this
debut she was straightway engaged for the re-
maining six weeks of the season for the goodly
sum of £500. Although she was associated
with some of the best singers of the day, in-
cluding Velluti, the last of the great male
sopranos to visit London, she won the approval
of the public and began to show signs of the
marvelous magnetism which, only two or three

1 8 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

years later, laid musical Europe prostrate at
her feet.

A characteristic tale is told of her first per-
formance with Velluti. He, being a singer of
the old school, was accustomed to embellish
his melodies with such cadenzas and flourishes
as seemed good to him, but in rehearsal he
contented himself with humming through his
part without ornament. Consequently, Maria
had no idea what embellishments he planned to
use. At the performance, in the course of a
duet with her, he introduced a set of brilliant
vocal pyrotechnics much to the liking of his
hearers. What were their delighted amaze-
ment and his disgust when, a moment later,
Maria reproduced every flourish and ornament
he had employed, throwing in at the end, for
good measure, some dazzling skyrockets of her
own invention!

In the fall of 1825 she accompanied her
father to New York as leading prima donna of
his opera troupe. She was very young and
almost without experience, but it was she,
rather than he, that carried the musical burden
of America's first season of grand opera.
Garcia himself, having passed his prime, could
no longer count on good service from his voice,
and, as the other members of the company
had but slight artistic merit, Maria's load was
a heavy one.

New York had never seen a performance of

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 19

grand opera in the European style, but, de-
spite its inexperience, it was prompt to grasp
the fact that the young prima donna was a
remarkable and fascinating artist. The morn-
ing after the first performance the Evening
Post said: "Her voice is what is denominated
in the Italian a fine contra-alto, and her science
and skill in its management are such as to
enable her to run over every tone and semi-
tone of three octaves with an ease and grace
that cost apparently no effort. Her person is
about the middle height, slightly embonpoint;
her eyes dark, arch and expressive, and a play-
ful smile is almost constantly the companion
of her lips. She was the magnet who attracted
all eyes and won all hearts, ... a cunning
pattern of designing nature, equally surprising
us by the melody and tones of her voice and
by the propriety and grace of her acting."

Her popularity increased as the season went
on. Garcia realized her value as a drawing
card and gave her every opportunity to display
her qualities. He even wrote an operetta for
her, in which she had so much singing to do
that after the first two performances she
fainted away from fatigue. This drew from
one of the newspapers a protest to the man-
agement for subjecting a girl of such tender
years to so great a strain.

While Maria was thus basking in the sun of
public approbation, her life behind the scenes

20 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

was full of hard work and tempest. With in-
creasing years Garcia had become more frac-
tious and exacting than ever and was con-
stantly quarreling with his high-spirited
daughter. "Cannot" was a word never per-
mitted in his household ; what he said must
be done must be done, no matter how diffi-
cult. On one occasion he told Maria to pre-
pare a new role within a very few days. When
she remonstrated that the time was too short,
he replied that if she did not learn it he would
kill her. She learned it! Again, after a hot
dispute behind the scenes, they were playing
the last act of "Otello." Suddenly Maria
noticed that the dagger in her father's hands
was a real one and that there was a murderous
look in his eye. Thoroughly frightened, she
fell on her knees before him, pleading hoarsely
in Spanish, "For God's sake, father, don't kill
me!" But murder was not in Garcia's mind,
and the dagger was only a hasty substitution
for a mislaid property weapon.

In March, 1826, Maria married a man of
French birth named Malibran, a naturalized
American doing business in New York. He
was well on in middle age, but reputed wealthy.
How the marriage came about is not known.
Perhaps Garcia forced it through because of
Malibran's apparent wealth ; or, perhaps,
Maria thought it the easiest way to free her-
self from an irksome paternal tyranny. The

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 21

marriage was a complete failure, for her hus-
band soon showed himself to be an unprinci-
pled rascal without either money or honor.
When Garcia and his troupe left for Mexico
in the fall of 1826, Madame Malibran stayed
behind in New York, very likely with the
idea that she could help her husband to
straighten out his tangled affairs. Occasion-
ally she sang solos in Grace Church and also
took part in some performances of English
operettas at the Bowery Theatre, but after a
long winter of domestic disillusion and futile
efforts to arrange an endurable life with her
husband, she decided to leave him finally and
to return to Europe. In the autumn of 1827
she arrived in Paris.

Her life during the nine years remaining to
her was an unbroken series of artistic triumphs
in Italy, France and England — she never sang
in Germany. Her year in America had trans-
formed her from a promising debuttante into
a full-fledged artist. Her voice had become
an organ of sympathetic timbre and extensive
range, contralto in quality, but reaching up-
wards easily into the soprano tessitura. The
middle part of it was inferior in quality to
the lower and the upper, but Garcia's excel-
lent schooling and Malibran's own instinct and
skill enabled her to minimize its weaknesses
and emphasize its beauties.

In person she was rather small, but well-

22 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

proportioned ; charming, rather than beautiful.
On the stage she was always most becomingly
dressed, quite unlike the typical dowdy Italian
prima donna of those days.

As an actress she carried everything before
her. When we read in cold blood about her
histrionic methods it seems as if they must
have been extravagant and often bordering on
bad taste, but such was not the verdict of her
contemporaries, who found her acting both
sincere and powerful. Behind every note she
sang and every gesture she made were an au-
dacity, a fire and a passion that stirred the
emotions of her hearers to their very depths.
She was frankly hungry for applause and
would sometimes even stoop to meretricious
means in order to win it. Like her father, she
never doubted her ability to meet any emer-
gency, and her astounding versatility enabled
her to accomplish many seemingly impossible
tours de force. Only two failures are charged
to her account — one the impersonation of the
Moor himself in Rossini's "Otello" ; the other
an attempt to dance a mazurka on the stage.
In her brief career she took part in thirty-five
operas, in some of which she was able to sing
more than one role. Her mind was so ac-
quisitive that she could master a role in a few
hours, and her restless temperament was al-
ways urging her to add to her repertory.

In private life she was as bewitching as

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 23

she was in public. Everybody she met fell
instant captive to the charm of her warm, im-
pulsive, generous qualities. It is fatiguing
merely to read the story of this amazing
woman's activities. She was never still; she
never rested. Her days were so full that one
wonders how she could have lived through
even one of them — up at dawn for a long
gallop on horseback, rehearsals and social in-
tercourse all day long, the opera at night, fol-
lowed by suppers and dancing — the sturdy
flame that burned so strong in all the Garcias
and that brought her brother and her sister to
extreme old age, Malibran seemed determined
to consume in herself within a few years.

I shall not attempt to follow her in her
many tours — to-day in Paris, to-morrow in
London, then back to Paris by way of Brus-
sels; a month later a triumphal progress
through enraptured Italy; then England
again.

In January, 1828, she made her Parisian
rentree in "Semiramide" and finished the sea-
son there with ever-increasing success. When
her father returned from America she joined
forces with him for a few performances of his
favorite operas. His star was setting, but for
a little while it shone as brightly as ever it
had. The night he sang Otello it seemed that
all his youthful fire had come back to him.
No one was more delighted at this than his

24 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

daughter. At the fall of the curtain on one
great scene, Desdemona lay pale and weeping
on the stage at the feet of the raging Moor.
When, in response to hearty applause, the cur-
tain rose a moment later she was seen standing
beside him, hand in hand, her face almost as
black as his. In the brief preceding instant
the happy girl had thrown herself into her
father's arms and kissed his sooty face !

In 1829 she and the great German soprano,
Sontag, had all London at their feet. The
following year she met Charles de Beriot, a
Belgian violinist of note, with whom she
formed a happy and enduring liaison, and who
became the father of her two children. With
him she made a home for herself in Brussels,
to which she always returned in her brief and
infrequent holidays. In 1832, at a few hours'
notice, she started for Italy with her friend,
the mighty Lablache, and made a brilliant tour
through the principal Italian cities. The story
was always the same. Wherever she appeared
her audiences were limited only by the size of
the auditorium. Her fees increased by leaps
and bounds. In 1835 she received from the
London opera £2775 for twenty-four perform-
ances— not bad pay even for 1914!

In 1836 she succeeded in obtaining from the
French courts an annulment of her marriage.
This was brought about largely through the in-
fluence of our old Revolutionary friend,

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 25

Lafayette, now a very old man. He, like the
rest of the world, was the devoted slave of the
young prima donna, and used to say laugh-
ingly that she was both the latest and the last
sweetheart of his long life. As soon as Mali-
bran was free she married de Beriot.

In April, 1836, she was riding in the park
in London and had a bad fall from her horse.
She made light of her injuries, which in re-
ality were serious, and insisted on singing the
same night. If she had taken reasonable care
of herself it is likely that she would have re-
covered completely from the accident, but she
had never known how to spare herself and,
although in constant pain, continued her stren-
uous life without abatement. In the autumn
she was engaged to sing at a great festival in
Manchester, England. Although in no con-
dition to appear at all, she insisted on singing
not only what was on the programme, but also
all the encores that the greedy public demanded
of her. On the third day she collapsed com-
pletely and was carried from the stage to her
hotel in a dying condition. A few days later,
September 23, 1836, she died in the twenty-
ninth year of her age. She was buried in Man-
chester for a time and then taken to her final
resting-place in the cemetery of Laeken in
Brussels.

There was something so feverish, so meteoric
about Malibran's career that it is hard to esti-

26 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

mate her real merit as an artist. She flashed
across the heavens, dazzling all beholders and
leaving them powerless to indicate coherently
the path she followed. Her personal mag-
netism was so powerful that it rendered dis-
passionate criticism of her art all but impos-
sible. Musically, she had some creative power,
as her improvisations and published songs at-
tested, but dramatically, despite her indisput-
able histrionic gifts, she created nothing. She
left behind her no worthy followers; her ar-
tistic influence ended with her brief life. And
yet so shrewd and competent a critic as Ros-
sini said: "I have met in my life only three
singers of real genius — Lablache, Rubini, and
that spoiled child of nature, Malibran."

To turn from the study of Maria Garcia's
career to that of her sister is like listening to
a symphony by Beethoven after "Tristan and
Isolde," or reading Wordsworth after Shelley.

Pauline Garcia was born in Paris in 1821
and came to America with her parents four
years later. All her long life she retained a
vivid memory of her father in the hands of
the Mexican brigands, who, after robbing him
of his all, compelled him, at the point of the
knife, to sing them a song. She was as pre-
cocious intellectually as Maria, but as docile
and amenable as her sister was impatient and
rebellious ; her father put it, "the one must
be bound by a chain ; the other may be led by

PAULINE VIARDOT GARCIA
1821-1910

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 2"]

a silken thread." At an early age she could
speak five languages easily, and when she was
eight we find her perched on a high stool play-
ing accompaniments for her father's singing
lessons. Later she became a pupil of Liszt's.
She was only eleven when her father died —
too young to have had her voice trained by
him. She always held that her mother was
her teacher, but it is more likely that she her-
self and her brother, between them, were re-
sponsible for her excellent method of singing.

In 1838 she made a concert tour in Germany
with her brother-in-law, de Beriot, and a year
later made her operatic debut in both London
and Paris as Desdemona and La Cenerentola.
Theophile Gautier promptly hailed her as "a
star of the first magnitude." Her girlish
charm, despite her plain features, won all
hearts at once, and her mezzo-soprano voice
of wide compass, though not of strictly beau-
tiful texture, had in it an unusual power to stir
the emotions. Within a short time this girl
of eighteen was singing first roles in the com-
pany with Lablache, Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini
and Persiani.

In 1840 she married Louis Viardot, a
Frenchman who had made some name for him-
self in letters and the dramatic world, and with
whom she lived happily for more than forty
years.

A grand tour of the Italian opera houses of

28 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Europe soon made her well and favorably
known in Madrid, Vienna, St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Edinboro and Dublin, although she
never sang publicly in Italy. Everywhere she
was accepted as an artist of the highest rank.
Meyerbeer's vogue was at its zenith, and
Pauline soon became famous for her im-
personation of the heroines in "Robert le
Diable" and "Les Huguenots." She was, too,
the inspiration and creator of the great role of
Fides in "Le Prophete," which was first pro-
duced in 1849, and with her interpretation of it
made a great sensation in the word of opera.
This was one of the greatest of her roles, sung
by her in all some two hundred times, but per-
haps not greater than that of Orphee in Gliick's
undying opera, which was revived for her in
i860 at the Theatre Lyrique in Paris, and in
which she sang more than a hundred times. In
1861 Gliick's "Alceste" afforded her another
opportunity to display her splendid art.

She retired from the operatic stage in 1863
and lived in Baden till 1871, when she returned
to Paris. There she gathered about her many
pupils and friends, with whom she passed use-
fully and happily the remaining years of her
life. She died in 1910, nearly three-quarters
of a century after her sister.

Madame Viardot-Garcia's appeal was always
to the cognoscenti rather than to the unthink-
ing public. Neither her face nor her tall, lean

MARIA AND PAULINE GARCIA 29

figure were ingratiating at first sight, and her
voice, despite its range and technical facility,
always had a somewhat thin, harsh timbre.
But the noble artistic nature of the woman,
her superb musicianship, her great skill as an
actress and the vivid expressiveness of her in-
terpretations won the praise of the best mu-
sicians in Europe. Liszt wrote of her: "In all
that concerns method and execution, feeling
and expression, it would be hard to find a name
worthy to be mentioned with Malibran's
sister. In her, virtuosity serves only as a
means of expressing the idea, the thought, the
character of a work or a role."

Schumann, in token of his great admiration,
wrote for her the cycle of songs, Opus 24, and
Wagner has recorded his approbation of the
masterly fashion in which she sang for him at
sight a whole act of Isolde.

She was an exemplary artist in all her roles,
but was exceptionally fine in the operas of
Gliick and Meyerbeer, and left the operatic
world appreciably richer by means of her su-
perb interpretation of them. As a teacher of
singing, after her retirement from the stage,
her influence was not so great, but she was
able to pass on worthily to the present genera-
tion the great traditions and experience of her
family.

Maria Garcia belonged to the romantic
school of singing, poignant, exuberant and per-

30 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

sonal, making a quick appeal to the emotions
and dependent, in great part, on the moods and
impulses of the hour ; the art of Pauline Garcia
was of the classic order, impersonal, restrained,
striking deep, but not less moving and all the
more satisfactory because of its serenity and
reposeful power.

Catalan! an6~pasta

ANGELICA CATALANI (1780-1849)
GIUDITTA NEGRI PASTA (1798-1865)

WO stars of the first magnitude
were shining brightly in the musi-
cal heavens in the early part of the
last century — Angelica Catalani and
Giuditta Pasta. Nature had bestowed on
Catalani every physical gift that could con-
tribute to her success as a singer, and, in ad-
dition, a lovable, wholesome disposition, but
had neglected to endow her with musical in-
stincts or serious artistic ambition. From
Pasta, on the contrary, Nature had with-
held beauty of voice and person, com-
pensating for this lack by a generous endow-
ment of lofty artistic ideals, sustained by un-
usual intelligence and perseverance. It is
both interesting and instructive, in view of this
absolute contrast in natural equipment, to
study simultaneously the lives of these two
women and to reassure ourselves once again
that the race is not always to the swift, and
that, without a great voice, one can sometimes
become a great singer.
3i

32 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Angelica Catalani was born in Sinigaglia,
Italy, in 1780. Her father was, at the time
of her birth, a well-to-do man with social
ambitions, and, in order to give her the proper
start in life, he sent her early to school at the
fashionable convent of Santa Lucia at Gubbio.
Music was an important feature in the school
curriculum, and the singing of the choir en-
joyed considerable celebrity in the neighbor-
hood. It was not long before Angelica, with
her lovely voice and person, became the cen-
tral figure in the choir, and people came from
far and near to hear and look at her.
Sometimes she would sing a solo so ex-
quisitely that the congregation would break
into applause, much to the horror of the
bishop, who remonstrated solemnly thereat
with the mother superior. The good lady
hearkened dutifully to his words, and with-
drew Angelica to the rear row in the choir,
where she was less visible, even if no less
audible.

Everybody advised an operatic career for
the gifted girl, but her father was ambitious
to marry her brilliantly, and finally renounced
these worldly ideas only when business re-
verses forced him to yield. At the age of
fourteen Angelica was sent to Florence to
study singing under Marchesi, a male soprano
and teacher of great renown. She was with
him for about two years and undoubtedly

CATALANI AND PASTA 33

learned from him much that was worth
knowing, but also acquired the florid style
that, later, she developed to the point of ab-
surdity. In 1795 she made her operatic debut
in Venice in an opera by one Nasolini. Her
success was immediate with the general public,
who went into raptures over her beauty, her
noble bearing and her superb voice. The
cognoscenti alone took notice that she was no
actress and no musician. From Venice she
went to other large Italian cities, and every-
where wras welcomed as a rising star of
transcendent brilliance.

As all through her long career she owed
all her success to Nature and practically noth-
ing to art, her singing must have been nearest
perfection in those early days, before too easy
triumphs, flattery and fatigue had tarnished
the luster of her unequaled gifts. Her voice
was powerful, rich and clear, nearly three
octaves in compass and extending upwards
easily to the G in altissimo. Such flexibility
was without precedent — runs, trills, roulades,
every vocal flourish, were accomplished with-
out apparent effort. Her chromatic scales,
both ascending and descending, adorned with
incidental crystalline trills, were simply awe-
inspiring. No singer before or since has car-
ried such a variegated and bewildering
box of vocal tricks. Knowing and cool-
headed critics observed that a curiously per-

34 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

sistent oscillation of the lower jaw in rapid
passages detracted from the perfection of her
coloratura, but her vocal excellences were so
many and so extraordinary that it seemed
hypercritical not to accept the voice as a prac-
tically perfect instrument.

In her early days she affected a sentimental
style of singing, which, as her voice was
neither passionate nor sympathetic in quality,
fitted her ill ; but later she was wise enough to
abandon her attempts at tenderness and be-
came what Nature planned her for — the great-
est of all bravura singers. To the end of her
days, she never learned to read music, to play
any instrument or to sing strictly in time.

In 1804 she went to Lisbon to sing, and
there fell in love with a French military man
named Valabregue. He was not in any way
a desirable match, but to all expostulation she
replied simply, "But what a fine-looking
man !" and before long married him. If
her husband had possessed some of the
worthy ambitions that she lacked, he might
have made a great artist of her, after all ; but
for art he cared not a fig — his only aim in
life was to fill and empty his pockets with all
possible celerity. To him his wife's voice was
merely a source of income. The result was
that, although Catalani remained before the
public for nearly a quarter of a century after

CATALANI AND PASTA 35

her marriage, the passage of years added not
an inch to her artistic stature.

In 1806 she gave three concerts at the Paris
opera before enraptured audiences. Napoleon
himself made her an offer that would keep her
in Paris on her own terms, but she took a dis-
like to him and stole away to London, never
to return to France so long as he was in
power.

She possessed every quality likely to please
the British public, including a hatred of
Napoleon, and from the very first was treated
by them as a goddess descended from Olympus
to delight them with her voice. In 1807 her
total profits in England were $80,000. For
singing "God Save the King" or Rule, Brit-
annia," she was sometimes paid as much as
$1,000, and for a festival $10,000 — there were
no phonographs a century ago to augment
these modest emoluments ! Sometimes, after
one of Napoleon's victories, His Majesty's
Government would engage her to sing patri-
otic songs in her best broken English at public
meetings, in order to instil new courage into
the hearts of the people.

In February, 1815, after the abdication of
Napoleon, she returned to Paris ; and, later,
during The Hundred Days, followed the
court into exile at Ghent. After Waterloo,
she made a triumphal progress through Ger-
many, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium. The

36 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

ensuing winter Louis XVIII granted her the
Theatre Italien in Paris, with a yearly sub-
vention of $32,000 and a free hand as
manager.

This arrangement was entirely to Vala-
bregue's taste, and he proceeded without delay
to squeeze the Parisian public for the bene-
fit of his own pocket. He held that his wife
and "four or five puppets" constituted a suf-
ficiently good opera company, and selected his
artists on this basis. He reduced the orches-
tra in size and quality, and mounted the
operas in most parsimonious fashion. In
every way he could devise he sought to gain
money with which to gratify his wife's and
his extravagant tastes. For a time everything
prospered with them and they were able to
live like millionaires. (The bill for their
servants' beer alone amounted in one year to
about $600!) It must be added, in Catalani's
favor, that all her life she was ready to sing
and to give her own money for charity.

Catalani's operatic repertory was a meager
one, and now was reduced to a number of so-
called operas, which were, in reality, nothing
but a hodge-podge of songs gathered from
all sources for the purpose of displaying her
vocal tricks. She paid little or no attention to
the action of the piece and wandered on and
off the stage at her own sweet will. It is not
surprising that such treatment did not wear

CATALANI AND PASTA 37

well with the Parisians and that before long
she was singing to empty houses. Within two
years the theatre was ruined and Catalani's
own fortune seriously impaired.

To refill her depleted purse, Catalani started
on a tour through the countries of Northern
Europe, which was destined to last about ten
years. Her voice had begun to lose some of
its finer attributes, but it was still a splendid
organ, and her beauty was as queenly as ever.
She sang mostly in concert, occasionally in
opera. In 1824 she reappeared in London,
where the most loyal of all publics gave her
a hearty welcome. She continued her wan-
derings, with ever-diminishing returns, till
1828, when, in Dublin, she appeared in public
for the last time.

The remaining twenty years of her life she
spent at her villa near Florence, active in
good works and her family life, a kindly, pious
woman. She died in 1849.

Of Catalani's voice I have said enough —
only a marvelous organ could have rendered
tolerable a style of singing and an attitude
towards a great art so meretricious and fan-
tastic. In her small repertory were two of
Mozart's operas, "Le Nozze di Figaro" and
"La Clemenza di Tito," but they were not
favorites with her, because in them she was
obliged to sing in time. She much preferred
operas, or arrangements of operas, in which

23-

38 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

she was free to take such liberties with the
music as suited her momentary impulse. Al-
though a majestic figure in serious opera and
a charming one in light parts, she was com-
pletely at ease only in concert.

In both opera and concert she wished al-
ways to be "the whole show," and, to achieve
this end, did all in her power to prevent good
artists, who might win applause for them-
selves, from appearing on the same stage with
her.

Her most famous song was an air with
elaborate variations called "Son Regina" ("I
am Queen"), by Rode. In later life, when
her voice had lost something of its flexibility,
though not its power, she used to sing an ar-
rangement of the bass air in "Le Nozze di
Figaro," "Non piu andrai," in which her
clarion tones pierced the loudest orchestra with
thrilling effect. Another tour de force
was the imitation of the swell and fall of a
bell, which she would execute with super-
human clearness and control of power. Then
there was a sort of double falsetto in altissimo,
which enthusiasts likened to the highest notes
of a nightingale.

It may already have been surmised that she
was not attentive to criticism from any source.
Once, in Germany, a musician of standing
ventured to speak unfavorably of her musi-
cianship. "He is an impious man," she said,

CATALANI AND PASTA 39

"for when God has given to a mortal so ex-
traordinary a talent as mine, everybody
should honor and applaud it as a miracle. It
is profane to depreciate the gifts of Heaven."

A final pen-picture is worth reproducing.
It was written by a journalist contemporary
with her:

"When she begins one of the interminable
roulades up the scale, she gradually raises
her body, which she had before stooped almost
to a level with the ground, until, having won
her way with a quivering lip and a chattering
chin to the very topmost note, she tosses back
her head and all its nodding feathers with an
air of triumph; then suddenly falls to a note
two octaves and a half lower, with incredible
aplomb, and smiles like a victorious amazon
over a conquered enemy."

Just as extraordinary as the beauty of
Catalani's voice was Pasta's power as a dra-
matic singer. Catalani's life is a record of
great gifts unused or squandered ; Pasta's one
of mediocrity transformed into excellence.

Giuditta Negri, known in history as Pasta,
by reason of her marriage with an obscure
singer of that name, was born of Jewish par-
entage in Como; near Milan, in 1798. Little
is known about her early life and surround-
ings, except that she studied first under the
chapel-master in her native town and later in

40 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

the Conservatorio in Milan. In 1815 she
made her professional debut in Brescia, sing-
ing a little later in Parma and Leghorn, with-
out arousing any enthusiasm for her voice or
art. In 1816 she was in Paris as one of
Catalani's "puppets," and in 181 7 in Lon-
don with Fodor ; but she made no im-
pression in either city and returned to
Italy practically as unknown as when she
left it.

The cause of these early failures was not
far to seek. Her voice was coarse, inflexible,
inclined to huskiness and often off the pitch;
her features were commonplace and her figure
squat and awkward. It needed some years of
severe self-discipline to impart to her1 person
that air which made her, like the diminutive
Garrick, seem six feet tall, and to render her
voice one of the most expressive and stirring
of which we have any record. In the young
Jewess was the consciousness of power, the
germ of the great artist ; her failures but fur-
nished her with the key to her own problems.

After two years of hard study, in 1819 and
1820, she sang in Milan and Rome with suc-
cess, and in 182 1 and 1822 reappeared in
Paris, where even the most critical now ac-
cepted her as the greatest dramatic singer of
the day. Her principal roles were in "Otello"
(Rossini), "Tancredi" (Rossini), "Romeo e
Giulietta" (Zingarelli) (in which she took

GIUDITTA NEGRI PASTA
1798-1865

CATALANI AND PASTA 41

the part of Romeo), "Nina" (Paesiello) and
"Medea" (Mayer), in all of which she was
held to be incomparable.

The refractory voice was now a soprano
of good range, almost docile, almost beauti-
ful, wholly convincing and frequently thrill-
ing. In an epoch when singers strove to outdo
each other in opulence and fantasy of orna-
ment, Pasta created a new fashion by the re-
straint and chastity of her embellishments.
She never improvised. Whatever she did on
the stage had been conceived and elaborated
in her studio. The labor she had to expend
in order to master her music gave to her ren-
derings an authority and dignity quite her
own, while a fine instinctive sense of rhythm
furnished a solid foundation for the loftiest
musical superstructure.

She had no capacity for comedy, but in
serious or tragic parts was thoroughly at home
and able to stir her audiences profoundly.
The majesty of her carriage and the sweep
of her gestures were superb. She was the
classic artist par excellence. In men's parts
she was especially convincing. Talma, the
great French actor, once watched her play
in "Tancredi" (an operatic setting of Voltaire's
tragedy) witih intense interest, and said to her
afterward : "You realize my ideal ; you pos-
sess the secret I have sought to discover. To
touch the heart is the aim of the true artist."

42 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

For six years she alternated between Lon-
don and Paris and then returned to Italy.
The self-restraint of her style did not alto-
gether please the Neapolitans, but in the North
she was accepted at her real value and the
recipient of every possible honor. Bellini
wrote for her "La Sonnambula" (1831) and
Norma" (1832), in both of which she
achieved memorable successes. Into every
part she played she poured her creative power
so generously that her impersonations seemed
to be real people. Even Amina in "Sonnam-
bula," a role quite different from those that
had made her famous, was invested by her
with a grace and a girlish charm as delight-
ful as they were unexpected.

In 1833 she returned to Paris with an en-
larged repertory, including "Anna Bolena"
(Anne Boleyn), which Donizetti had written
for her. In this new work, with Lablache, a
superb Henry VIII, at her side, she won a
fresh triumph.

Since her departure for Italy, six years
ago, a new star had swung into the heavens
— on the lips of everybody now were the
names of Pasta and Malibran. The two
prima donnas sang the same serious roles
and each had her ardent and argumentative
partisans. Malibran had the better voice and
made a quicker appeal to the public by means
of her fervid talents, but she was the creature

CATALAN I AND PASTA 43

of impulse, whose most striking effects were
often the fruit of sudden inspiration, and, con-
sequently, not, in the truest sense, creative.
Pasta, in contrast, created, because her in-
spiration was guided by premeditation. In-
spiration, when, left to itself, is often only a
flash in the pan; it needs the discipline of
premeditation to make its expression con-
sistently true. The singer must never trust
to chance for his effects. He should prepare
his interpretation line by line, note by note,
so that when, before the public, though every
external circumstance be against him, his offer-
ing shall clearly indicate the intention behind
the manifestation. This capacity always to
express the intention was Pasta's to an un-
usual degree and raised her above all the sing-
ers of her time, even above "the spoiled child
of Nature," Malibran.

Unfortunately, Pasta's prime was short —
scarcely more than ten years. So early as
1833 her voice was often untrue to pitch and
had lost something of its expressiveness, al-
though as an actress she was greater than
ever. Four years later, in London, the voice
was a mere wreck. Pasta was not yet forty,
and it is probable that the early failure of her
voice was due to the severe discipline to which
she had always had to subject it in order to
keep it obedient. Whatever the cause, the
voice had gone, and shortly afterward Pasta

44 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

retired from the stage. A professional visit
to St. Petersburg in 1840 was a complete
fiasco.

In 1850 she returned to London for two
appearances, at which she essayed scenes from
her most famous parts. Many of her old ad-
mirers were on hand, and many younger peo-
ple, who* had come to hear for themselves the
great artist of whom they had heard so much
from others. Rachel, the French tragedienne,
was there, and Pauline Viardot-Garcia,
neither of whom had ever heard her. In the
voice itself survived no trace of its former
eloquence, but the old spirit and the old
artistic intention remained to delight those that
could penetrate the outward seeming. Rachel
saw only the ruin and was outspoken in her
ridicule ; but Manuel Garcia's daughter was
quick to separate the apparent from the real.
At the conclusion of the programme she
turned to her companion and, with tears in
her eyes, said : "It is like the Last Supper
of Da Vinci — a wreck, but still the greatest
picture in the world."

In 1829 Pasta had bought a villa near Lake
Como, which became her permanent home.
Here, surrounded by family, friends, pupils
and flowers, she lived quietly till her death in
1865.

Few great artists have left behind them as
few memories of their private lives as has

CATALANI AND PASTA 45

Pasta. But, after all, it is the artist, not the
woman, that concerns us. We shall search
musical history in vain to find among female
singers her superior in serious roles. Viardot-
Garcia, in equipment and artistic point of
view, bears a certain likeness to her, for both
women, triumphing over physical disabilities,
rose to lofty heights by means of the strength
and truth of their artistic natures.

If Catalani had only had Pasta's artistic na-
ture; or if Pasta had only had Catalani's
glorious voice and beauty — but how vain it is
to hope for perfection in this imperfect
world !

Xuigi Cablacfye

(1794-1858)

HO was the greatest singer that
ever lived?" "Don't you suppose
that Caruso is the greatest tenor
the world has known?" "Is Mel-
ba's voice as lovely as Patti's was?" One fre-
quently hears such questions as these, but one
never hears a satisfactory answer to them, for
the excellent reason that no satisfactory an-
swer is possible. Singers, like actors and ora-
tors, and unlike painters and sculptors, leave
no records of their art behind them. Their
song once sung may linger for a while in the
memory of their hearers, but it is, after all,
only a memory, pretty sure sooner or later to
fade into oblivion. The phonograph, wonder-
ful machine though it be, can never reproduce
anything more than the cruder and more ob-
vious qualities of a singer's voice and art, and
leaves unrecorded the personal magnetism and
the thousand subtleties that are the secret and
essence of a great singer's power over his audi-
ence. The only knowledge or opinion we can
have of a voice that we have never heard is
that derived from hearsay, and it has all the
vagueness and unreliability that is character-
istic of hearsay.

46

LTJIG1 LABLACHE
1794-1858

LUIGI LABLACHE 47

Nevertheless, it is interesting to rummage in
the dusty volumes of musical history and rem-
iniscence and to exhume the estimates of old
singers as recorded by their contemporaries.
Although a singer's fame is fleeting, we find in
musical history the names of a score or two of
singers who, by means of their voices and
their art, made upon their own generation such
a profound impression that their fame and tri-
umphs have come down to us with a com-
pleteness of description that enables us to form
for ourselves some sort of understanding of
their great qualities.

Of all the singers of the nineteenth century
none has left behind him such a fragrant and
delightful memory as has Luigi Lablache.
Big in voice, stature, mind and heart, rich in
musical and histrionic talent, he was the dom-
inating personality whenever and wherever he
sang. To hear him was to provide one's self
with a never-fading memory of complete musi-
cal satisfaction ; to know him personally was
to love and to admire him.

Lablache was born in Naples in 1794, and
died in the same city in 1858. His father,
a French merchant, had been driven from his
home in Marseilles in 1791 by the Revolu-
tion ; his mother was Irish. His musical gifts
showed themselves early, and as a child he
was taught the elements of music, as well as
singing, at the Conservatorio della Pieta dei

48 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Turchini in Naples. In addition, he developed
considerable skill in the playing of stringed in-
struments, and might well have had a suc-
cessful career as a violinist or 'cellist, if his
voice had not led him into operatic paths.
The soundness and thoroughness of his early
musical training were of great value to him all
through his life. In 1809, when he was fifteen,
he sang the contralto solos in the performance
of Mozart's Requiem, given in Naples on the
death of Haydn. Shortly afterwards his voice
broke and within two or three years developed
into a truly magnificent bass.

As a boy, Lablache was full of mischief and
good spirits, and but little disposed towards
study and hard work. His great passion was
for the stage and no less than five times he
ran away from the conservatory, in order to
take part in operatic performances in small
theatres. Each time he was brought back in
disgrace, but in 18 12 he was graduated from
the conservatory and made his debut in "La
Molinara," by Fioravanti, at the San Carlino
Theatre in Naples, a small opera house where
they gave two performances a day. At this
time, too, he married Teresa Pinotti, the
daughter of an actor, who, in the course of
a long wedlock, not only bore him thirteen
children, but also exercised a thoroughly bene-
ficial influence on his life. Perceiving the ex-
cellence of his natural parts, she awakened

LUIGI LABLACHE 49

in him a whole-hearted ambition to develop
them to their utmost, which within a very
short time placed him on the very pinnacle of
operatic success, and kept him there until old
age.

Just a hundred years ago, in 1813, he made
his real professional debut in Palermo in the
now forgotten opera of "Marc Antonio" by
Pavesi. It is a delight to pause for an instant
at this point and to try to picture to ourselves
this radiant youth on the threshold of a career
in which every early promise was fully real-
ized in the mature artist. At his birth only
good fairies had presided; the bad ones all
stayed away ! Lablache was very tall and nobly
proportioned. His head was large and well-
shaped ; his features clean-cut and expressive.
His voice, both powerful and flexible, ranged
from the E-flat below the bass staff to the
E-fiat above. It could be dramatic or tender,
majestic or humorous, a trumpet or a 'cello.
As a comedian Lablache was inimitable. His
laugh alone, full-throated and hearty, was
enough to put a theatre in lasting good humor.
His comic play, while never descending to buf-
foonery, was incomparably laughable. On the
other hand, he could play tragic parts with
true pathos and Olympian dignity, his superb
physique lending itself perfectly to such im-
personations. What wonder that, with such a
combination of natural gifts and cultivated tal-

50 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

ents, his career during the next forty years
should have been but one long series of tri-
umphs in all the great opera houses in Europe !

After several years in Italy he filled his first
operatic engagement in Vienna, where, inci-
dentally, in 1827 he sang the solo bass part
in Mozart's Requiem after the death of
Beethoven — the work in which he had sung as
a child, eighteen years before, when Haydn
died. In 1830 he sang for the first time in
both Paris and London. During the next
twenty years it was his custom to pass a por-
tion of each year in these two cities, visiting
between times some of the other important
European opera houses. For several seasons
he sang in company with Malibran, Pasta,
Grisi, Rubini and Tamburini — a quartet of
singers never equalled in the interpretation
of the music of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti.

Voice, physique, musicianship and histrionic
talent seem never to have been blended so hap-
ily in any singer as they were in Lablache. If
there were weak spots in his equipment I do
not know what they were — his contemporaries
do not appear to have discovered any. His
most famous roles were in "L'Elisir d'
Amore," "Don Pasquale," "La Rinegata," "La
Cenerentola," "II Matrimonio Segreto," "Se-
miramide,""La Gazza Ladra," "Norma," "Anna
Bolena," "Zaira," "II Barbiere di Siviglia,"
"Moise," "I Puritani," and "Don Giovanni."

LUIGI LABLACHE 5 1

Most of these operas are merely names to us
nowadays, but we can easily picture him in
the still familiar "Don Pasquale" and "II Bar-
bire," as well as in what was one of his most
famous impersonations, Leporello in "Don Gi-
ovanni." If he had been born forty years
later what a Hans Sachs, what a Wotan and
what a Falstaff he would have made !

Lablache retained his voice practically unim-
paired till he was quite sixty years of age,
although he grew so corpulent as to become
towards the end all but immovable. Indeed,
in his later days he used to sit in a capacious
chair placed in the center of the stage and sing
his music without attempting to rise to his
feet. The incongruity of a basso buffo singing
his part from a fixed point on the scene must
have been striking, but Lablache was a privi-
leged person with the public and at liberty
to sit or stand, just as he pleased, provided
only that he would lend the luster of his voice
to the musical performance. His death was
mourned universally, and left vacant in the
operatic world a place that has never been
completely filled.

The size and sonority of Lablache's voice
were its most obvious characteristics, of which
many stories are told. Once, it is said, his
wife was awakened at night by the sound of
what she took to be the notes of the fire-
tocsin — it was only her husband uttering in his

52 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

sleep the staccato notes in a duet from "Puri-
tani," which he had been singing with Grisi
that same night. His upper D was a stu-
pendous note, with which, in great dramatic
climaxes, he used to split the ears of the
groundlings. But he never used the full
strength of his voice at inappropriate times ;
with unerring taste and skill he always ad-
justed its power and quality to the artistic ne-
cessities of the situation.

This trumpet-like D of his used to recall to
the veterans the same note in the voice of
Cheron, the glory of the Paris Opera towards
the end of the eighteenth century. Cheron by
merely blowing into a glass goblet could crack
it; by singing into it his great D he burst it
into a thousand pieces.

Lablache was famous for his skill in select-
ing and wearing costumes and took the great-
est pains in regard to all the details of make-
up. On the stage he seemed to be a real per-
son and never had the unnatural, upholstered
look so common to opera singers in costume.
Whether in comedy or in tragedy, until his
size became excessive, his appearance was al-
ways harmonious with the ideal stage picture.

Although not an educated man in the usual
sense, he managed to acquire a great deal of
general information which, combined with his
innate good sense, geniality, humor and tact,
made him a welcome guest in the best society

LUIGI LABLACHE 53

everywhere. Emperor Alexander II of Rus-
sia was most cordial in his relations with him,
and Queen Victoria, who at one time studied
singing with him, mentions him in her pub-
lished diaries with affection and esteem. Until
his day it had been the custom in England at
musical parties where professional musicians
performed to stretch a cord across the draw-
ing-room in order to separate the musicians
from their hearers of the social world, to
segregate, so to speak, the goats from the
sheep. One evening, after Lablache had sung,
he was talking with somebody on the other side
of the cord. Suddenly and unostentatiously he
reached down, untied the cord and dropped it
quietly on the floor. The tradition was
broken once for all. The cord was never
stretched again in London.

Of Lablache's great size and strength there
are innumerable stories. One day, in the
course of a wearisome rehearsal, he reached
lazily into the orchestra, seized a double bass
by the neck with one hand, lifted the instru-
ment from the ground at arm's length, held it
there for a minute or two, and then replaced
it gently, all as easily as if he had been playing
with a walking-stick. Often, as Leporello, he
would tuck the importunate and squirming
Masetto, though a full-sized man, under his
arm and carry him off the stage without the
least apparent effort.

54 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

His sense of humor was delicious. He was
once lodging in the same hotel in London with
General Tom Thumb. A lady who was
anxious to make the midget's acquaintance
called one day at the hotel and, by mistake,
knocked at Lablache's door, which was opened
by the gigantic singer himself. Somewhat
startled, the lady said:

"I should like to see General Tom Thumb,
if you please."

"I am he," answered Lablache in his deepest
voice.

"Oh ! but I thought he was a very small
man?"

"So I am, Madam, when I am on exhibition,
but when I am at home I always make myself
comfortable."

Many men and women have been born well
equipped for a singer's career, but have been
content to win the easy successes that come in
youth to such as they and cease when youth
ceases. Others, but poorly endowed by nature,
have, by means of unsparing, intelligent labor,
achieved for themselves honorable niches in
the musical Hall of Fame. Lablache is almost
unique in that, despite his royal inheritance of
talents, he never during his long career relaxed
his effort to bring his art to the full flower of
perfection, and, in consequence, attained to an
artistic excellence that has seldom been
equalled in the history of song.

'D^ree Oenors

GIOVANNI BATTISTA RUBINI (1795-1854)

ADOLPHE NOURRIT (1802-1839)

GILBERT DUPREZ (1806-1896)

ANUEL GARCIA, the elder, was
the first of the dynasty of tenors
that has ruled the operatic kingdom
for the past hundred years. We
of this day perceive his importance more
clearly than did his contemporaries, many
of whom were disposed to criticize cer-
tain imperfections in his voice and tempera-
ment and to overlook his superlative excellence
as an all-round artist. The second of the line
was Rubini, who was crowned "King of Ten-
ors" by his coevals, and whose name now,
seventy years after his retirement from the
stage, is still symbolic of a glorious vocal art.
At the time that Rubini was playing on the
heart-strings of the public through the me-
dium of Italian song Adolphe Nourrit, at the
Paris Opera, was developing and fixing the
standards of a noble art in harmony with the
55

56 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

French artistic taste. He was succeeded by
Gilbert Duprez, who, after brilliant successes
in Italy, returned to his native Paris to carry
on the admirable work of Nourrit. These two
Frenchmen were in no sense rivals of Rubini,
for Rubini had no rivals, and the passing years
have dimmed the luster of their once great
renown, but they were, both of them, fine
artists whose services to vocal art are well
worthy of remembrance.

Giovanni Battista Rubini was born in
Romano, near Bergamo, Italy, in 1795. His
father, an obscure music teacher, had faith
in his son's future from the first and spared no
pains to bring to flower a talent that to the rest
of the world was at first scarcely perceptible.
At the age of eight Giovanni was able to
fiddle in an orchestra and sing in a choir.
His first singing teacher dismissed him for his
lack of promise, but, notwithstanding, the
boy, at the age of twelve, was given a girl's
part in the theatre at Bergamo. Then he be-
came a member of the chorus in the Bergamo
Opera and was allowed to fiddle between the
acts. On one occasion he substituted for a
solo singer and acquitted himself so well that
the manager added to his usual stipend the
munificent sum of one dollar.

Encouraged by this modest triumph,
Giovanni went to Milan to seek an engage-
ment, but was not found worthy of even a

GIOVANNI BATTISTA RUBINI
1795-1854

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ $7

place in the chorus. A concert tour, in com-
pany with a violinist, was a complete failure.
These rebuffs must have been disheartening to
the young man, but he had faith in his own
powers and, like Pasta, utilized his early
failures as a foundation for a great career.

Finally, he obtained a small engagement as
solo tenor in the opera at Pavia at a monthly
salary of ten dollars. From there he passed
progressively to Brescia, Venice and Naples.
The opera at Naples under Barbaja's able
management was one of the most important
in Europe. It had been especially rich in
tenors, one of whom had recently been Garcia
himself, but, nevertheless, young Rubini made
a favorable impression on the difficult Neapol-
itan public. Even now Barbaja did not per-
ceive his potentiality and would only re-en-
gage him at a reduced salary. Rubini could
have returned to the smaller theatres at in-
creased rates, but was shrewd enough to see
that the development of his art needed just
such surroundings and opportunities for
study as Naples offered him. So he accepted
Barbaja's terms, promising him the while to
get even with him later.

Barbaja sent him to Rome, where he
achieved his first substantial success in Ros-
sini's "La Gazza Ladra." Not long afterward
Palermo confirmed the verdict of Rome. Little
is known about those early days and it was

58 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

not till 1825, when Rubini made his debut at
the Theatre Italien in Paris, that the Muse
of History began to take copious notes on his
doings. "La Cenerentola," "La Donna del
Lago" ("The Lady of the Lake") and "Otello,"
all by Rossini, served to present him to the
French metropolis. His triumph was imme-
diate and undisputed, but Barbaja, to whom
he was still under contract, would yield him
to the Parisians for six months only and then
recalled him to Naples, Milan and Vienna.

Garcia was the greatest interpreter of Ros-
sini's operas and it was in the same repertory
that Rubini first made a name for himself, but
it was not till Rubini fell in with Bellini that
he found the perfect medium for his peculiar
gifts. On his return from Paris the two
men met for the first time, discovered a strong
mutual sympathy and retired together to the
country. There Bellini, with Rubini at his
side, composed "11 Pirata" ("The Pirate"). In
1826 Rossini's florid style was all the vogue,
but Bellini, probably prompted by the tenor,
incorporated in his opera a number of simple,
emotional melodies in the style by which he
is now remembered.

The opera was produced in 1827 with
Rubini in the cast and Rossini's star began
to set as Bellini's rose above the horizon.
The older man was the greater musician, but
Bellini's skill as a melodist outweighed with

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 59

the public his weaknesses as harmonist and
dramatist. Rubini's exquisite voice and art
in such tuneful music were irresistible and the
production of this now obsolete opera marked
the beginning of a new school of singing.
Within a few years "La Sonnambula,"
"Norma," "I Puritani," and Donizetti's
"Anna Bolena" (written for Pasta and Ru-
bini) brought it to its fullest growth.

In 1 83 1 Rubini was free from his contract
with Barbaja and sang in England for the first
time. From then till his final retirement, a
dozen years later, he divided his time between
Paris and England. He was as popular in
the English provinces as in London and much
in demand for concerts and festivals, as well
as for opera. He added to his repertory the
Donizetti operas as they appeared and scored
characteristic successes in "Lucia," "Lu-
crezia Borgia" and "Marino Faliero."

During these twelve years he was constantly
associated with what was probably the most
wonderful group of singers ever assembled —
Malibran, Grisi, Persiani, Viardot-Garcia,
Tamburini and Lablache, not to mention others
who in less brilliant company would have been
considered remarkable. Perhaps the most
perfect cast of all was that of "I Puritani"
(1835), Bellini's last opera, written for Grisi,
Rubini, Tamburini and Lablache and sung by
them over and over again in London and

60 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Paris. Ah, those were the golden days of
purely lyric singing!

In 1843 Rubini sang in London and Paris
for the last time. His voice was beginning to
show signs of wear, and, with a wisdom too
rare among singers, he decided to retire before
it should fail him altogether. But many of
the large cities of Northern Europe had never
heard him and he was persuaded to undertake
a concert tour with Liszt, then in his early
prime, through Holland and Germany. They
parted company in Berlin and Rubini went
on to St. Petersburg. At his first concert in
the Russian capital he cleared over $10,000.
Every honor was heaped on him and Czar
Nicholas appointed him not only "Director of
Singing," but also a Colonel in the army !

The following year, after a tour through
Italy and Vienna, he returned to Russia, but
the climate did not agree with his voice and
he announced his immediate and final retire-
ment as a singer. He was a rich man. During
his last active years he is said to have derived
from his singing an annual income of $40,000,
and from these large receipts he had thriftily
laid by a capital of something like $600,000.
He passed his last years on his estate at
Romano, where he died in 1854.

In all respects but one Rubini was insig-
nificant. He was short, rather stout, and
awkward ; his features were plain and dis-

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 6l

figured by small-pox. He had no taste in
dress and would wear anything his costumer
chose to put on him. He had neither skill nor
ambition as an actor and strolled about the
stage much as Catalani had done, regardless
of his fellow-singers and their doings. His
delivery of recitative and dialog was slov-
enly, although he took some pains with con-
certed pieces. But when it came time for him
to sing a substantial solo, this commonplace
little man was transformed into an angel of
song, Israfel himself. Then, indeed, the whole
world held its breath and listened, for none
could resist the emotional appeal of his sing-
ing.

Rubini's voice ascended from E of the bass
clef to high B in chest quality, and then in a
thrilling falsetto to the F or G above. His
breath control was so complete that even the
observant were often unable to detect when
he replenished his lungs. His mastery of the
florid school of vocalization, acquired as an
interpreter of Rossini, contributed to the per-
fection of his delivery of Bellini's melodies.
Every resource of technique was at his com-
mand. One of his most characteristic effects
was a sudden passage from loud to soft, or
from soft to loud — an effect that in later years
he much overworked. He was the first to use
the vibrato for the expression of emotion,
and the first, too, to employ the sob that ap-

62 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

peals so irresistibly to the many admirers of
Caruso.

Other tenors have had voices as beautiful
as Rubini's and, possibly, technical skill as
great as his, but none has equaled him in his
ability to move the hearts of his hearers. By
means of his voice alone he could crowd into
his rendering of a song a whole world of love
and pathos. For this reason he was remem-
bered not by his roles but by his songs, and
was just as effective in concert as in opera.
Toward the end of his career his style be-
came full of mannerisms and exaggerations,
but, despite them all, he never lost his power
over the public. His singing spoke to the
hearts of both the simple-minded and the
sophisticated. He sang his last note seventy
years ago, but his power to stir the tender
emotions that too often lie dormant in our
breasts seems still to live to prove to us what
Talma said to Pasta — "The aim of the true
artist is to touch the human heart."

A hundred years ago the art of singing
among the French was at a low ebb. The in-
stinctive love of the Frenchman for drama had
developed a vocal style noisy, exaggerated and
quite neglectful of the amenities of bel canto.
Fifty years later some of the most perfect
performances of opera in all Europe were to
be heard at the Paris Opera. This ameliora-

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 63

tion was due, in large measure, to the art of
two French tenors, Adolphe Nourrit and Gil-
bert Duprez.

Nourrit was born in Montpellier, in the
south of France, in 1802. His father, Louis
Nourrit ( 1780- 1 831), was first tenor at the
Paris Opera, a position that he held for a
number of years, despite a complete lack of
imagination and fervor, because of his excel-
lent voice and reliable habits. Through all his
operatic career he carried on a business in
diamonds and was determined that his son
should be a man of affairs and not a singer.
The boy was sent early to a reputable school,
where his intelligence and love of study made
a good record for him ; then, after some train-
ing in bookkeeping, he became a clerk in a
life insurance office.

But Adolphe had the artistic temperament,
as well as a tenor voice, and, unknown to his
father, began the study of music outside of
office hours. One day he was practicing in
his room at home when Manuel Garcia, who
was a friend of Louis Nourrit's, chanced to
hear him. Garcia talked with him and was
so much impressed by his earnestness that he
undertook to persuade the father to allow his
son to follow his natural bent. His plea was
reluctantly granted and Adolphe became the
pupil of Garcia himself.

The young man made such good prog-

64 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

ress that in 1821, through his father's influ-
ence, he made his debut at the Paris Opera in
a small role in Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride."
He was received cordially by the public, who
discovered in him all his father's good qual-
ities, plus the artistic instincts that the older
man lacked. The physical resemblance be-
tween father and son was so exact that in
1824 Mehul wrote for them "Les deux Salem,"
the plot of which turned upon this likeness.
The opera was withdrawn shortly, but better
opportunities to test Adolphe's mettle soon
presented themselves.

Rossini divined the young tenor's talent and
wrote for him a part in his new opera, "Le
Siege de Corinthe." With Garcia to coach
him, Adolphe was able to make a success in
this, his first good role, and when, in 1826,
his father, said to be jealous of his son's first
triumph, retired permanently from the stage,
he was appointed first tenor of the Paris
Opera.

He was only twenty-four years of age, but
he made his value felt at once. During the
next ten years, in addition to singing in all
the standard repertory, he was the creator and
often the inspiration of no less than eight
great roles. He was the original Arnold in
Rossini's "William Tell" (1829), Robert in
"Robert le Diable" (Meyerbeer) (1832),
Eleazar in "La Juive" (Halevy) (1835), and

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 65

Raoul in "Les Huguenots" (Meyerbeer)
(1836) — all creations of first-rate importance.
Only a man of substantial gifts and accom-
plishments could have borne such responsibil-
ities, but Nourrit's voice, head and heart
equipped him well for the task.

His figure was short and rather too rotund
for comeliness, but he carried himself with
dignity and grace and dressed with rare taste.
His face was sympathetic and expressive. As
an actor he was equally skilful in both com-
edy and tragedy. His voice was not so full
or rich or flexible as the best Italian voices, but
it was under admirable control and unusually
effective in the head and falsetto registers. His
style was energetic, without being vociferous;
elegant and resourceful, rather than impas-
sioned. Indeed, Nourrit was the embodiment
of all that the French still consider most de-
sirable in a singer.

But what made him exceptional in his pro-
fession were his intellectual versatility and his
attitude toward his art. He was a serious
student of literature and philosophy and a
capable critic of painting. He had poetic gifts
and wrote librettos for ballets danced by
Fanny Ellsler and Taglioni. He was an ac-
knowledged authority on stagecraft, to whom
the composers of the time, especially Meyer-
beer, were indebted for much valuable con-
structive criticism. He was the first French

66 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

singer to recognize and publish the beauty of
Schubert's songs.

His art was a religion, of which he was a
priest, bound to serve it with affection and
reverence. He ordered his private life in ac-
cordance with this point of view and tried
to ennoble the lives of his associates. He was
in sympathy with the ideals of the Revolution
of 1830 and when the crisis came went about
the city singing patriotic songs on the barri-
cades and in the theatres. Most singers have
been singers and nothing else — Catalani and
Rubini, for instance; Nourrit, quite aside
from his art, was a useful and brilliant mem-
ber of society.

We have now reached the year 1837. Till
then nothing had happened to give warning of
the pathetic end of this admirable artist and
worthy man. Since 1826 his supremacy at the
Paris Opera had been unshared, undisputed ;
no rival or serious hostile influence had crossed
his path; he had been spared the battle for
recognition that most opera singers have to
fight. It would have been better for him,
probably, if his nerves and will had undergone
the toughening influence of strife and hard-
ship. He was only thirty-five years old ; his
powers gave no sign of deterioration ; he was
the idol of the public ; his future seemed full
of rich promise.

But the management of the opera had begun

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 6/

to think that an institution as important as
theirs had grown to be ought to have more
than one tenor of first rank in its employ.
Gilbert Duprez, a young Parisian, had been
making a name for himself in Italy. One day
Nourrit was told that Duprez had been en-
gaged to share with him his onerous duties.
He made no remonstrance, but his spirit
seemed utterly broken. A few nights later,
in the midst of a performance, he suffered a
nervous collapse when he saw Duprez enter
the theatre. The next day he sent in his resig-
nation. Every argument was used to dissuade
him from this step, but to all expostulation he
replied that the mere thought of competition
on a stage where for so long he had been free
from all rivalry was intolerable. His decision
was final and on April i, 1837, he sang in
Paris for the last time. An overflowing and
enthusiastic public testified heartily to its love
and admiration for the retiring artist, with
whom it was sincerely grieved to part.

Nourrit wished to quit the stage altogether,
but the love of it was so deep in him that
before long he undertook a tour through
Belgium and the French provinces. Every-
where he was welcomed cordially, but one
night, while he was singing in Marseilles, his
voice, probably because of a cold, broke. Com-
pletely unnerved, he rushed from the stage and
in a frenzy tried to kill himself. His friends

68 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

managed to control him, but it was evident that
his fine, sensitive mind had become perma-
nently unbalanced.

In 1838 he was sufficiently recovered to go
to Naples, where he undertook to alter his
method of singing according to the Italian
taste. He also wrote the book and Donizetti
the music for an opera in which he himself
was to sing, but the performance was, for
political reasons, prohibited by the censor. He
made a few appearances in some of his old
roles, and sang as well as ever he had, but
he persuaded himself that the public applauded
him only to deride him. One night, after sing-
ing at a charity concert, he went home and
either fell or jumped from the roof of his
house. Such was the pitiable end, at the age
of thirty-seven, of one of the most versatile
and creative of all operatic tenors.

Gilbert Duprez, the involuntary cause of
the passing of Nourrit and his successor at the
Paris Opera, was born in Paris in 1806. His
father, a perfumer by trade, was a poor man,
and it would have been hard for the boy to
get an education if he had not early attracted
the attention of Choron, a distinguished musi-
cal pedagog, who discovered in him evidence
of a real musical talent, which he himself
undertook to develop.

Duprez's first attempts to win recognition as

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ 69

a singer were, like Pasta's and Rubini's, in-
effectual. At the age of fourteen he sang in
the chorus at a performance of Racine's
"Athalie," given at the Theatre Francais. A
visit to Italy somewhat later brought him no
renown and in 1825 he returned to Paris,
where he sang through a season at the
Odeon. The public continued apathetic to his
efforts, though Choron never lost faith in his
pupil. He was equally inconspicuous at the
Opera Comique in 1828. About this time,
despite his poverty, he took unto himself a
wife with a voice and once again crossed the
Alps. In Milan the two of them obtained an
engagement for four months for the sum of
$175 all told.

But the tide was about to turn. Duprez's
voice and dramatic skill were expanding rap-
idly and soon enabled him to make a brilliant
tour through Italy. For a time he was Mali-
bran's leading tenor and in 1835 Donizetti
wrote for him the tenor part in "Lucia." Tales
of his prowess reached Paris and in April,
1837, less than a month after Nourrit's re-
tirement, he made his debut at the Opera in
"William Tell."

It is not surprising that he did not win
immediate recognition from the Parisians, who
were accustomed to the grace and finesse of
Nourrit. Duprez's stature was insignificant,
his features plain, almost to ugliness. Besides,

70 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

the part of Arnold had been written to fit
Nourrit's high falsetto and, consequently, was
not thoroughly suited to Duprez's more ro-
bust organ. But, all the same, there were a
spontaneity and a fire in his interpretation that
worked in his favor, so that even the most
loyal admirers of Nourrit had to admit that
the debut was a promising one.

As time went on and Duprez was heard in
other operas, the Parisians came to the conclu-
sion that he was a worthy successor to their
former favorite. His Italian-trained voice was
more virile in quality than Nourrit's and in-
cluded in its range a robust high C. Where he
lacked in facility he gained in force. Nourrit's
style had been polished almost to the point of
affectation ; Duprez's had a broader and more
convincing sweep. Duprez could never achieve
the air of elegance for which Nourrit had been
famous, but his dramatic instincts were so
true that, as in Pasta's case, his bodily pres-
ence seemed to increase in majesty with the
crescendo of a dramatic situation. In mat-
ters of diction the two men were equal.

It is worth recording that Henry Chorley,
an admirable critic, who heard both singers
many times, considered Duprez the most sat-
isfactory of all contemporary tenors, not ex-
cepting Rubini.

For ten years Duprez was the dominating
singer at the Paris Opera, although his only

RUBINI, NOURRIT AND DUPREZ Jl

really important creation during that period
was in "La Favorite," by Donizetti. His rule
was so absolute that Berlioz himself attacked
him in print, charging him (and all singers,
for that matter) with being unprogressive,
even reactionary. But his prime was a short
one. He was still young when his voice began
to fail him, probably for the same reason that
Pasta's had failed her prematurely — a too
severe discipline of a naturally refractory
organ. Before he was forty-five he retired
from the stage.

He had already had some success as a
teacher, and to teaching and the composition
of music of no especial value he devoted the
remainder of his days. His most famous pupil
was Madame Miolan-Carvalho, who later did
so much to illuminate and beautify the operas
of Gounod. Duprez published two treatises
on the voice, which, like most attempts to de-
fine the art of singing in words, accomplished
but little. He died in Paris in 1896.

Ruskin tells us that the art of painting
reached its perfection in the Raphael Rooms
in the Vatican, and that, following the uni-
versal law of growth, this attainment of per-
fection was the inception of decay. As
Raphael was the perfect painter, so Rubini
was the perfect singer — in Rubini mere vocal-
ism attained its highest possible development.

72 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Rubini had many imitators, but as none of
them possessed his genius, the art of singing
according to his tradition soon tended to be-
come mannered and lifeless. Progress could be
made only along new paths. Nourrit and Du-
prez, though inferior to Rubini as singers, by
means of their versatility, energy and creative
power succeeded in establishing a new school
of operatic art, of which some of the best
features culminated, at the end of the century,
in the glorious achievements of Jean De
Reszke and Victor Maurel.

Sontag att& Cin6

HENRIETTE SONTAG (1806-1854)
JENNY LIND fl820-1887)

OST of the world's best singers
have come of Latin stock, but a
few have belonged to the Germanic
race. Of these daughters o^ the
North none are more deserving of remem-
brance than Henriette Sontag, a German, and
Jenny Lind, a Swede, both of whom, after
many triumphs in Europe, made extensive
tours through the United States.

Sontag was born in Coblentz, on the Rhine,
in 1806. Both of her parents were actors and
at the age of six she made her theatrical
debut at the Darmstadt Theatre. Her musi-
cal talent declared itself early, and at the age
of eight the little thing is said to have sung
the great air of "The Queen of the Night"
for the delectation of her parents' guests. In
181 5 her mother, now a widow, took her to
Prague, where she came under the notice of
Weber, and where, despite the fewness of her
years, she was accepted as a student in the
73

74 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

conservatory. She made rapid progress, and
when in 1821 she was unexpectedly substituted
for the prima donna in Boieldieu's "Jean de
Paris" she charmed everybody by her lovely
voice, her sure musicianship and her girlish
grace.

Shortly afterward her mother took her to
Vienna, where she sang for four years in both
German and Italian opera. The German
method of singing was not more admirable
in those days than it is now, but Sontag's
voice grew constantly in beauty and her op-
eratic style was greatly benefited by her asso-
ciation with Fodor, the French prima donna.
Weber took an interest in her, and in 1823,
though she was still only a slip of a girl, en-
trusted her with the soprano role in his new
opera "Euryanthe." Beethoven, too, was her
devoted admirer, and after the first per-
formance of Weber's opera, from which he
was absent, his first question was, "How did
little Sontag sing?" A year later he selected
her to sing the soprano parts in the first per-
formances of the Ninth Symphony and the
Mass in D.

By 1825 she had sung in Berlin and Leip-
sig, as well as in a number of the smaller
German cities, and had been accepted every-
where as a singer of exceptional quality. The
enthusiastic populace and students of Got-
tingen, when she left them, threw her car-

HENRIETTE SONTAG
1806-1854

SONTAG AND LIND /5

riage into the river, declaring that nobody was
worthy to occupy it after her.

Her growing fame had already crossed the
Rhine, and the Parisians, though somewhat
incredulous as to the possibility of any good
singing of German provenance, were anxious
to hear her. In 1826 they had a chance to
judge her merits for themselves. She made
her Parisian debut in the part of Rosina
and had not been on the stage five minutes be-
fore her audience was completely captivated.

Her figure was slender and graceful, her
features delicate, her eyes large and expres-
sive, her hair rather blonde, her smile bewitch-
ing, her hands and feet perfection itself.
Nature had molded her expressly to play the
part of a coquette. Her voice was a lyric
soprano of exquisite charm and sweetness,
encompassing two flawless octaves and able
to execute the most florid passages with
delicious facility. In vocal fluency, though
not in power, she surpassed even Catalani.
When one adds to these qualifications skill
as an actress and a musicianship that satis-
fied Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Weber and Bee-
thoven, it is not surprising that the Parisians
approved without reserve the verdict of the
Germans.

In parts requiring suavity, tender sentiment
and archness of expression Sontag was ador-
able ; as a singer of Mozart's lighter roles she

j6 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

has probably never been equaled. Her phy-
sique and temperament precluded complete
success in portraying the deeper emotions, al-
though, as she matured in style, she added to
her repertory commendable impersonations of
Desdemona and Donna Anna.

In 1828 London heard her for the first
time and capitulated at once. A few months
later she was again in Paris battling with
Malibran for the crown of Queen of Song.
The Spaniard was all fire and passion, the
German mistress of a serene and perfect art.
The question of supremacy could of course
never be settled, because it was one of kind,
not of degree, but the rivalry was none the
less intense, even acrimonious, for a time.
Finally some tactful person persuaded the two
prima donnas, who were performing on the
same programme at a private concert in
London, to commingle their voices in a duo
from "Semiramide." The result of the com-
bination was so happy that Spain and Ger-
many declared peace on the spot and sealed
the treaty with a kiss. This was the first of their
many joint appearances in opera and concert.
In 1829 Malibran, Sontag and Damoreau, join-
ing forces for a benefit performance at the
Paris Opera, brought the receipts to the as-
tonishing total of $27,000.

As a captivator of the hearts of men Son-
tag was irresistible; Germans, French, Eng-

SONTAG AND LIND JJ

lish, she enslaved them all. An English diplo-
mat in Berlin was known as Lord Montag,
because Montag always follows Sontag. In
1826 the aged but still susceptible Goethe
wrote, "I would gladly sit to-day and all day
to hear her. Her talent has more confused
than comforted me. The good that passes by
without returning leaves behind it a vacuum."

Offers of matrimony were of almost daily
occurrence, but to all her wooers the enchan-
tress said a kindly "no." It was thought that
her heart was impregnable, but early in 1830
her recent secret marriage to Count Rossi, a
young Italian diplomat, was announced. Of
course she had to give up the stage and, in
order that her humble birth might not jeopard
her husband's career, the King of Prussia
bestowed on her a patent of nobility. After
a few farewell performances she retired, ap-
parently forever.

For nearly twenty years the Countess
Rossi led the mundane life of a diplomat's
wife, accompanying her husband to Holland,
Germany and Russia, where he was succes-
sively accredited. Her innate gentility enabled
her to grace her new position as it had
enabled her to grace the stage. Occasionally
she sang in public for charity, and it was
noticed that her lovely art had in no way
deteriorated. Her domestic life was thor-
oughly happy and it is probable that Europe

?8 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

would never have heard her in opera again
and that America would never have heard her
at all, if it had not been for the revolutionary
movement of 1848.

Jenny Lind's retirement from the operatic
stage in 1849 ^elt a v°id in London that
Lumley, the manager of Her Majesty's The-
atre, felt should be filled at once. The social
disorders of the previous year had played
havoc with Count Rossi's finances, so that
when Lumley made the countess an offer of
$30,000 for a six months' season, she decided
to accept it, though it necessitated her hus-
band's retirement from diplomacy.

Great was the interest of the public in the
return of the famous singer after so many
years of absence, and great was its delight to
find that, although the voice had lost a little
of its bloom, their former idol was the same
exquisite artist as of old. Time had dealt
kindly too with her beauty and added only
a little plumpness to her girlish figure.

She made her rentree in "Linda di
Chamonix," following it with several operas
from her old repertory. All went well and
before long she was winning new laurels in
"Don Pasquale," "I Puritani" and "La Figlia
del Reggimento," all of which had been writ-
ten since her retirement twenty years before.
After England Paris and Germany welcomed
her back into their hearts.

SONTAG AND LIND 79

In 1852 she was called upon again to follow
in the wake of Jenny Lind. The Swedish
soprano, after two remunerative years in the
United States, sailed homeward from New
York, never to return. Some American man-
agers, feeling that a singer of Sontag's reputa-
tion could make a profitable tour through the
territory just covered by Lind, engaged the
German prima donna for a long season of
concert and opera.

Sontag landed in New York in September,
1852. On the night of her arrival she was
given a public serenade, according to the best
Barnum-Lind traditions, but the affair lacked
the strong guiding hand of Barnum and
quickly degenerated into a street riot, some-
thing on the order of the second act of
"Meistersinger." Sontag was so upset by the
uproar and excitement that she took to her
bed and had to postpone her first concert for
a week or two.

The attempt to tread in the footsteps of the
triumphant Swede might easily have resulted
in a disastrous anti-climax; besides, Alboni,
whose opulent voice and genial temperament
always made a strong popular appeal, arrived
in New York about the same time as Sontag.
But, despite these adverse circumstances and
uncertain health, Sontag was accepted at once
by the public at her real value. She made
her American debut September 27, 1852, in

80 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Metropolitan Hall, a fine new concert audi-
torium, situated on Broadway, opposite Bond
Street, which had recently been inaugurated
by Lind. Later she appeared in several of
her favorite operas at Niblo's Theatre, and
although Alboni's simultaneous appearances
with another company must have divided a
public at best none too numerous, her affairs
continued to prosper.

From New York she made a number of vis-
its to- the nearer large cities and then left for the
West and South. Conditions of travel in our
country were the reverse of luxurious sixty
years ago and must have been especially tax-
ing to a woman as delicately constituted as
Sontag, who for so many years had led a
life of ease. But the little woman was de-
termined to restore the family fortunes and
continued her tour month after month. She
was offered an engagement in Mexico that
promised to be highly remunerative. She
knew there was danger in accepting, because
of the widespread prevalence of cholera, but
would not listen to the voice of prudence and
in the spring of 1854 set sail from New Or-
leans with her husband. Her engagement
opened auspiciously, but soon after her ar-
rival she was struck down by the disease and
died in Mexico City on the 17th of June.

Jenny Lind was born of humble parentage

SONTAG AND LIND OI

in Stockholm in 1820. She began to sing al-
most as soon as she could speak and at nine
years of age was admitted to the singing
school connected with the Court Theatre. At
ten she was singing children's parts in public
and at eighteen made her debut as Agathe in
"Der Freischutz." Her performance was so
good that she soon became a regular member
of the company, singing leading roles in such
operas as "Euryanthe," "Robert le Diable"
and "La Vestale" (Spontini). In all she at-
tempted she acquitted herself well and was
assured of an honorable career in her native
city, but she was ambitious and perceived that,
if she was ever to become a great artist, she
needed a schooling much more comprehensive
than any she could find in Stockholm. She
was already a good pianist and thoroughly ac-
quainted with all the standard operas, ora-
torios and songs, but of the art of bel canto
she knew but little.

So in 1841, after three years as prima
donna, she resigned her position and went to
Paris to study singing with Manuel Garcia.
He told her that her voice had been sorely
fatigued, possibly permanently injured, by
reason of her ignorance of right methods and
would accept her as a pupil only after she
had taken several weeks of complete rest.
With characteristic energy and intelligence she
worked with Garcia for nearly a year, at the

82 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

same time availing herself of the many oppor-
tunities of hearing the wonderful singers,
both French and Italian, who at just that time
abounded in Paris. The results of this year
of study were so substantial that Meyerbeer,
struck by her talent, arranged an audition for
her at the Opera. A number of musical
celebrities were there to listen to her, but the
manager himself failed to put in an appear-
ance and the hearing came to nothing. For
this discourtesy Lind bore Paris a grudge till
the end of her days and never again, even
when she was asked to write her own con-
tract, would she consent to sing there.

She now returned to Stockholm, where dur-
ing the next two years she was again a mem-
ber of the opera company. Her art was
growing rapidly, and when in December,
1844, through Meyerbeer's influence, she was
given a chance to sing "Norma" in Berlin,
she achieved an unqualified success. She
followed this up with performances of other
roles and then made a tour of some of the
principal German cities, including Leipzig,
where she made Mendelssohn's acquaintance.

Her fame by now had penetrated as far as
England and caused Bunn, an English im-
presario, to make her a tempting offer to sing
in London under his management. She ac-
cepted his terms and signed the contract.
The signature was hardly dry when Lumley,

SONTAG AND LIND 83

another English manager, persuaded her to
sign a contract with him. Whatever the
rights of the question, the struggle between
Bunn and Lumley for the honor of presenting
"the Swedish nightingale" to the British pub-
lic, furnished most wonderful advance ad-
vertising for the songbird. Such lawsuits,
charges and recriminations, such backing and
filling, all duly reported in the newspapers,
never before or since have covered the pages
of musical history. Incidentally, all England
became acquainted with every detail of Lind's
private and public life, her virtues, her gen-
erosity, her voice, her musicianship — nothing
was left untold. The curiosity of the public
in regard to her grew to white heat. Finally,
the courts awarded to Bunn a forfeit of $12,500
and on May 4, 1847, under Lumley's manage-
ment, Jenny Lind made her London debut at
Her Majesty's Theatre as Alice in "Robert le
Diable."

Every inch of space in the auditorium was
occupied; every opera enthusiast in London
was there burning with expectancy. At first
Lind was a little unsteady, but she soon gained
confidence and sang her first air in her best
style. The last note had not ceased when a
mighty "Br aval" emitted from the throat of
Lablache himself, who was in a box, gave the
signal for a pandemonium of applause. From
that moment till the end of her life Jenny

84 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Lind was the idol of the English public, its
incomparable singer, its standard of all
womanly virtues. In opera or concert the
story was always the same; the fever of ap-
probation never cooled. Those that could not
afford to enter the theatre stood for hours by
the stage door just to see her pass. Royalty
petted her, the populace adored her.

Her operatic career in London covered just
two years, during which she appeared in many
parts. Early in 1849, although she was not
yet thirty and the future seemed to promise
her a long vista of triumphs, she announced
her approaching retirement from the operatic
stage. Her last appearance on any operatic
stage took place May 10, 1849, in "Robert le
Diable."

The reasons for her early retirement from
opera have been much discussed, but never
clearly established. They are probably to be
found in certain temperamental peculiarities
which I shall touch upon presently.

Jenny Lind's voice was a soprano of wide
compass, a little husky and sometimes untune-
ful in the lower part, but increasing in power
and beauty as it ascended. Her breath-control
was exemplary. Her own intelligence and
industry, supplemented by the excellent in-
struction received from Garcia, made her so
completely mistress of her voice that even the
most difficult technical feats seemed well

JENNY T.IXD
1820-1887

SONTAG AND LIND 85

within her powers. Her musicianship was
above criticism, her artistic ideals of the
highest.

Her appearance was in no way striking.
Her eyes were, perhaps, her best feature and
imparted, especially when she was singing, a
pleasing expression to her plain features.

In physical gifts she was, therefore, not
above the level of a number of other female
singers, but in temperament she differed so
widely from all as to place her in a class
apart. Compared with such singers as Pasta
and Malibran her singing might be called cold,
but through this same coolness of style there
seemed to pierce a mystic flame that was
quite as emotional in its effect on her audi-
ences as the most glowing Latin fervor.
There was in her something of the moral in-
tensity that one discovers in the writings of
her compatriot Swedenborg. Like Nourrit,
she felt herself to be a priestess in the ser-
vice of her art and spared no pains to make
her service perfect. This determination to
give out only her best resulted often in ap-
parent self-consciousness and over-emphasis.
Further, she was always so intensely herself
that she had no capacity to enter into an op-
eratic part of which the general character was
not in harmony with her own nature. With
her keenness at self -analysis she must have
recognized this deficiency and have been

86 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

anxious to abandon dramatic singing before
the public should perceive for themselves her
unfitness for it. Whatever the real cause of
her retirement — and I offer here one that is,
perhaps, not much more plausible than a
number of others — Jenny Lind after 1849
was heard in concert only.

The next chapter in the life of our prima
donna brings her to our own shores for the
most sensational and triumphal concert tour
ever made by anybody. Enter Phineas T.
Barnum, the world's greatest showman, past
or present. (The entrance of Barnum neces-
sitates the free use of superlatives!) He was
now in the prime of life, keen-witted, re-
sourceful and ambitious. He had already
made a tidy sum exhibiting Heth Joyce, a 161-
year-old ( ?) negress, who swore she had
been the mammy of George Washington him-
self, and a small fortune out of General Tom
Thumb. Now, looking about him for new
wonders to show, he bethought him of Jenny
Lind, whom he had never heard, but whose
renown had reached even his unmusical ears.
He also had heard of the purity of her pri-
vate life, of her piety and of the extraordinary
generosity with which she had always shared
her prosperity with her less fortunate fellow-
creatures. Barnum himself says that had it
not been for her virtues, especially her gen-
erosity, he never would have brought her to

SONTAG AND LIND 87

America, and that his experience as a show-
man persuaded him that her voice and virtues
in combination would prove a gold mine for
all concerned. And he was right.

The contract was signed in England early in
1850. It called for a maximum of 150 con-
certs and guaranteed to the singer $1,000 a
concert, plus one-half the receipts in excess
of $5,500. To the singer was granted the
right to sing for charity, when she wished.
Barnum undertook to provide a musical con-
ductor, Julius Benedict, a baritone singer,
Belletti, both selected by Lind, and such other
musicians as should be required on tour. All
the expenses of advertising, travel, etc., were
assumed by Barnum.

In 1850 the great American public knew
little about musical doings in Europe and six
months before the arrival of Jenny Lind even
her name was almost unknown. But Barnum
had learned how to reach the public through
the newspapers and at once inaugurated a
campaign of education that soon familiarized
the entire country not only with the Swedish
singer's name, but also with every detail of
her life from her birth to the present moment,
her musical gifts and her love of giving.

When she arrived in New York early in
September, 1850, she was certainly the best
advertised woman in America and every-
body was on the qui vive to see and hear her.

88 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Crowds were at the dock to meet her, although
it was already night. Banners of welcome
were displayed everywhere, and when she
finally reached her hotel about midnight she
was greeted by a band of 130 pieces, preceded
by 700 firemen — everything prearranged by
the ingenious impresario. Publicity continued
to be the watchword day and night. Every-
where that Jenny went the crowds and the re-
porters were sure to go. It is surprising that
she did not resent this constant intrusion
on her privacy, but, so far as we can judge,
she seems to have adapted herself easily and
without apparent annoyance to her circum-
stances.

Her first concert took place September 11,
1850, in Castle Garden (now the Aquarium).
The best seats cost nominally three dollars,
though the right of choice was sold at auc-
tion. The first seat had gone to one Genin,
a hatter, who paid a premium of $225, which
soon came back into his pocket through the
sale of hundreds of "Jenny Lind" hats. When
the overture began there were said to be 7,000
people in the house. There was an excellent
orchestra of sixty under the leadership of
Benedict; also Belletti, the baritone, and
Richard Hofmann, a young English pianist,
who afterward settled in New York as a
teacher of piano and died there only a few
years ago.

SONTAG AND LIND 89

But the audience had ears only for Jenny
Lind. Her share of the programme consisted
of "Casta Diva," a duet with baritone, a trio
by Meyerbeer for two flutes and voice, an
echo song (in which she performed some as-
tonishing vocal feats bordering on ventrilo-
quism) and some Swedish melodies. She
sang also a "greeting to America," the words
of which had been written by Bayard Taylor
in competition for a prize of two hundred
dollars offered by Barnum and set to music
by Benedict. The audience applauded rap-
turously everything the singer did and also
called out the seemingly reluctant Barnum,
who announced that the prima donna had de-
termined to divide her share of the evening's
profits, $10,000, among a number of local
charities. The total receipts came to $26,000.

New York was now more than ever "Jenny
Lind" mad. During the next few months she
gave no less than thirty-five concerts in the
city. She also made a long tour that carried
her to all the large cities east of the Missis-
sippi and even to Havana. Her reception was
the same everywhere, except in Havana, where
the taste was all for Italian opera. Richmond,
Virginia, with only a few thousand inhabitants,
gave her a $13,000 house. Everywhere she
went she gave away liberal sums in charity.
In nine months she appeared in ninety-three
concerts, the total receipts of which were, ac-

90 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

cording to Barnum, $700,000, of which her
net share was $175,000. The gross balance
went to Barnum.

In June, 185 1, Lind decided, for reasons
not altogether clear, to leave Barnum's man-
agement and, in accordance with a clause in
her contract, obtained her release from him
on payment of a forfeit of $30,000. She was
now her own manager and continued her
touring for another year with unabated suc-
cess.

It is a pity that no competent writer ever
undertook to describe the many interesting
and amusing adventures of these two wander-
years. The few sketches that have come down
to us make us long for something more de-
tailed and complete. Benedict, for instance,
used to tell how in remote parts of the coun-
try the troupe would follow a water-course
by steamer. When they came to a town of
sufficient size, they would disembark and send
through the streets men bearing banners an-
nouncing the arrival of the world-famous
Jenny Lind, who would within a few hours
give a concert in the principal hall of the
place. There would be an auction sale of
tickets, the musicians would arrive at the hall,
bringing the pianoforte with them. The con-
cert would be given and an hour afterward
all hands would be sailing down stream again
bound for the next port.

SONTAG AND LIND 91

In 1852 she was married in Boston to Otto
Goldschmidt, the successor to Benedict in her
concert company. She was a Protestant, and
he a Jew, as were many of her most helpful
friends, including Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer,
Moscheles, Lumley and Benedict. The mar-
riage was a happy one.

In 1852 she returned to Europe, where, it
is said, she distributed all the profits of her
American tour in charity. From 1852 to
1855 she lived in Dresden and then removed
to England, where she made her permanent
home. She continued to sing in concert, but
her appearances became gradually less fre-
quent and ceased altogether in 1883. Sur-
rounded by her growing family, she lived a
full and happy life, devoted to the good of
others and to the art she had served so nobly.
She died at Malvern, England, in 1887.

To make a just estimate of Jenny Lind's
worth as a singer is difficult. Though the
most described of all the great prima donnas,
her exalted reputation is the hardest to ex-
plain. In voice and in dramatic talent she
was certainly inferior to her contemporaries
Sontag and Grisi ; she was supreme only as a
concert performer. Cool, expert criticism was
never applied to her by the general public.
Her early successes in Sweden and Germany
mean little, because of the low standards of
singing in those countries. England and

92 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

America never heard her till their critical
faculties had been numbed by the blast of
advance advertising that, in both cases, pre-
ceded her coming. The Parisian public, the
most knowing and sophisticated of all, never
heard her sing a note. She was only thirty-
five when she ceased to sing regularly and
resolved herself into a glorious tradition above
the reach of adverse criticism; after that her
infrequent appearances took place only before
the English, the most unquestioningly loyal of
all publics.

And yet the praise she won from such musi-
cians as Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Robert and Clara
Schumann, and Mendelssohn warns us that it
is not safe to apply to her the word "over-
rated." Mendelssohn wrote the soprano part
in "Elijah" for her and said, "In my whole
life I have not seen an artistic nature so
noble, so genuine, so true; natural gifts, study
and depth of feeling I have never seen united
in the same degree." This is certainly high
praise from a high source. Our own Theo-
dore Thomas, too, always maintained that of
all the great singers that sang in America
during his long lifetime, and he heard them
all, Sontag and Lind were certainly the great-
est.

Sontag won her victories by obvious means
— a lovely voice and person, combined with
a highly developed, exquisite art. Jenny Lind,

SONTAG AND LIND 93

on the contrary, gained hers by means so little
obvious that we, who never heard her, cannot
quite account for the tremendous impression
she made on her own generation. The
careers of the other great prima donnas
can be explained and classified ; Jenny Lind's
puzzles the imagination and assigns to "the
Swedish nightingale" a unique place in the
Golden Book of Singers.

(Brisi, Mlario anb
^amburini

GIULIA GRISI (1811-1869)

MARIO DE CANDIA (1810-1883)

ANTONIO TAMBURINI (1800-1876)

N THE previous chapters I have
tried to revive the careers of some
of the stars in the great constella-
tion of singers that made the first
half of the nineteenth century especially
memorable in operatic history. All of these
artists, except Nourrit and, possibly, Pauline
Garcia, owed their fame in greater part to
their interpretations of the operas of Rossini,
Bellini and Donizetti. Rossini, whose first im-
portant opera, "Tancredi" (1813), marks the
passing of the old-style Italian opera and the
inception of the modern, produced his last
opera, "Guillaume Tell," in 1829; Bellini's
last, "I Puritani," was first given in 1835;
the last of Donizetti's sixty-three operas had
its first performance in 1844. The first of
these dates, 1813, is coincident with that of
Garcia's first meeting with Rossini ; the last,
1844, marks also the final retirement of
Rubini.

94

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI 95

For reasons that cannot be gone into here,
the popularity of the operas of this school
began to wane almost as soon as the singers
for whom they had been written retired from
active service. Most of them are now quite
dead and forgotten. Of Bellini's, not one sur-
vives ; of Donizetti's, "Lucia," "Don Pas-
quale," "La Favorita" and, perhaps, one or
two others are occasionally resuscitated for
a few performances, and found increasingly
old-fashioned and decrepit; of the whole
school there is only one, Rossini's "Barbiere"
(1816), whose still youthful vigor seems to
promise immortality.

In 1854, when Grisi and Mario visited the
United States, they were practically the only
survivors of the famous "Old Guard," which
for more than twenty years had been the de-
light of Western Europe. Through death or
voluntary retirement, Catalani, Pasta, Mali-
bran, Sontag, Garcia, Rubini, Nourrit and
Duprez were completely silent; Lablache and
Tamburini, although occasionally to be heard,
were all but superannuated; Jenny Lind had
left the operatic stage for good and all, in
order to devote herself to concert singing;
Pauline Garcia was focussing all her talents
on the interpretation of Meyerbeer and Gliick.

So it is fitting that we should bring this se-
ries of biographical sketches to a close with
brief studies of the careers of Grisi and

96 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Mario, adding thereto a few paragraphs on
Tamburini, their colleague, who, after La-
blache, was the greatest bass of the period.

Giulia Grisi was born in Milan in 181 1.
Her father was a military engineer, who had
served under the great Napoleon. Her
mother had, in all probability, been a singer
before her marriage, and her mother's sister,
Josefina Grassini ( 1 773-1850), was one of the
best singers of her day. Giulia's older sister,
Guiditta, too, was a singer of some repute;
her cousin Carlotta a celebrated dancer. With
such a professional atmosphere about her, it is
not surprising that she, with an excellent
natural voice and dramatic instincts, should
have heard and accepted the call of the stage.

She studied under various masters, includ-
ing her sister, and at the age of seventeen
made her debut in Rossini's "Zelmira." De-
spite her youth and inexperience, her voice,
beauty and innate aptitude for the career won
for her the applause, not only of the public,
but also of Rossini himself, who predicted for
her a brilliant future. Bellini, too, was so fa-
vorably impressed by her performance that he
wrote for her the part of Adalgisa in
"Norma," which she had the honor of singing
in the company with Pasta, the first Norma.

Grisi's success brought her engagements in
other cities, and all Italy was soon open to her,

GIULIA GRISI
1811-1869

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI 97

but at this point she took a step which, seem-
ingly rash, proved in the event to be most
beneficial to her career. Before she could
realize that wealth and fame were already
within her reach, she had signed with a per-
spicacious manager a contract for several
years, on terms sufficiently liberal to satisfy
an untried debutante, but quite dispropor-
tionate to the important position that she
soon began to occupy in the operatic world.
She tried to release herself from this contract,
and when the manager undertook to hold her
to the letter of her bond, escaped across the
frontier and posted to Paris. Never again
did she sing in Italy.

Her aunt Grassini and her sister Giuditta
were in the French capital just then, and, what
was even more fortunate, Rossini, who gave
her at once the chance to sing the title role
in "Semiramide" at the Theatre des Italiens.
The debut was completely successful, and
from that year, 1832, till 1849, without a break,
Grisi sang every winter in the same theatre.

London heard her first in 1834 in "La
Gazza Ladra," and found her to its liking; a
little later, when she sang Anna Bolena, one
of Pasta's best parts, it proclaimed her a dra-
matic singer of the first order. From 1834
till 1861, excepting only 1842, she was en-
gaged every season as a member of the Royal
Italian Opera.

98 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In 1835 Grisi was one of the famous quar-
tet for whom Bellini had written "I Puritani,"
and showed herself worthy to be associated
with her celebrated colleagues. In the follow-
ing year she married a Frenchman, from
whom she was divorced after a brief and un-
happy union.

Grisi's voice was a clear, sonorous soprano,
homogeneous throughout and under excellent
control. It was somewhat lacking in sym-
pathy, but splendidly effective in dramatic
scenes. Her musical taste was good and en-
tirely free from trickery and affectation. She
was a resourceful and spirited actress in both
comedy and tragedy, but unquestionably at her
best in such dramatic parts as Norma and
Lucrezia Borgia. It was said that she owed
much to her early association with Pasta, of
whose art she was a reverent admirer. She
was short in stature, but was well propor-
tioned and carried her handsome head so nobly
on her shoulders that she gave the impression
of being much taller than she really was.
Taken all in all, she was richly equipped for
her long and resplendent career. Heinrich
Heine, who heard her in Paris in 1840, called
her "a rose among nightingales, a nightingale
among roses."

Grisi and Mario first met in London in
1839 as members of the Italian Opera,
and each recognized at once in the other a

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI 99

twin soul. Marriage followed soon after and
the affinity proved to be a thoroughly happy
one. As their professional association was
constant during the next thirty years, and the
story of one now becomes the story of the
other, it seems best at this point to narrate
the principal events of Mario's previous life.

We do not know with certainty either
Mario's full name or the exact time and place
of his birth. This uncertainty is all the more
curious because he was of noble family. Some
authorities hold that his name was Giovanni
and that the name of Mario, under which he al-
ways sang, was wholly assumed; others aver
that Mario was really his name and that when
he went on the stage he merely dropped his
patronymic, de Candia. Whatever his exact
name, he will always be remembered under
that of Mario, without title or surname. He
was born somewhere in Piedmont, probably
in Turin, in or about 1810.*

His father was a general in the army of
Piedmont and Mario, too, after an educa-
tion suitable to his high social position, en-
tered the army. In 1836, piqued by his pun-
ishment for an escapade of no great serious-
ness, he resigned from his regiment, and, when
the authorities refused to accept his resigna-
tion, hied him boldly to Paris. There his good

•Mario's daughter fixes these points as follows: Giovanni
Matteo de Candia, born October i8, 1810, in Cagliari, Sardinia.

IOO SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

breeding, his beauty and his great personal
charm opened for him every door. To com-
plete his equipment as a captivator of hearts
he possessed a tenor voice, untrained, but of
exquisite suavity and mellowness.

His qualifications for the lyric stage were
so many and so obvious that on all sides he
was urged to appear in opera. All his fam-
ily traditions were against such a step, and for
two years he withstood the blandishments and
offers of the managers, but finally gave his
consent, and in 1838 made his debut in "Robert
le Diable" at the Paris Opera, singing in
French. He had had no systematic training
in music or singing, his acting was amateurish
and the French language somewhat impeded
his utterance, but his radiant person and his
lovely voice more than counterbalanced his
shortcomings. In 1839 he made his London
debut with Grisi in "Lucrezia Borgia" (in
Italian), and the following year joined the
Italian company in Paris.

At the age of thirty Mario could have
played the part of Orpheus to perfection. He
was of medium height, graceful in line and
carriage. His features were clean-cut and
noble, his hair and beard glossy black. His
eyes were large and dark, full of fire and
passion. His voice was a ringing tenor, even
in quality throughout, and including in its com-
pass the high C. It was equally eloquent in

MARIO DB CANDIA
1810-1S83

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI IOI

the expression of both the fire and the passion
that shone in his eyes. One French critic re-
cords that the emission of the upper notes was
not quite free, but, with this possible excep-
tion, the voice must have nearly approached
perfection.

Happily, Mario was as conscientious and
ambitious as he was gifted, so that, despite his
lack of early training, the record of his career
is one of constant artistic growth. His asso-
ciation with Grisi was most influential in this
development, for she was born into the tra-
ditions of the stage, and, besides, was as ambi-
tious for him as he was for himself.

As an actor he never attained the skill and
versatility of such innate histrions as the
Garcias and Lablache, but his elegance of bear-
ing and a taste for costume equalled by that
of Lablache alone made his stage presence
always a delight to the eye. No other tenor,
not even Nourrit, was so successful as he in
playing the high-born gentleman — it was in-
stinct with him, both off and on the
stage.

He was matchless, too, as a stage lover and
as a drawing-room singer. His personality
and voice were profoundly disquieting to the
peace of mind of unattached ladies. It is re-
lated that once he was singing in a salon in
Paris. The last line of his song was, "Come,
love, with me into the woods." As he uttered

102 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

the final syllables a young woman, who had
been listening in a state of semi-hypnosis, rose
to her feet and tottered toward him, murmur-
ing, "I am coming."

After the retirement of Rubini, Mario suc-
ceeded to the position so long held by the older
man. As a singer he was not Rubini's equal
in poignancy of expression or in technical re-
source, but he surpassed him in sweetness and
elegance of style and was immeasurably his
superior as an actor. His art was at its
best in "La Favorita" and in the fourth act
of "Les Huguenots," but he was almost as
successful in a number of other operas. His
turn of mind was not originative, and the
only "creation" credited to him in all his long
career was the small tenor part in "Don
Pasquale."

After their marriage, Grisi and Mario
divided their time between Paris and London,
in both of which cities they continued to be
great favorites. Mario never sang in Italy.
Grisi was most conscientious in her attitude
toward the public, always seeking its appro-
bation and proud of her reputation for relia-
bility. Mario was much more sensitive by
temperament, and reserved to himself the
tenor's privilege of giving out at the last
moment.

For two such eminent singers to live and
work together for thirty years without a trace

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI 103

of artistic jealousy gives to our two artists a
unique place in operatic history. This ele-
ment of domestic felicity was a considerable
factor in their popularity, especially in Eng-
land. Grisi adored her husband and received
from him in return a loyal affection undis-
turbed by the feminine adulation of which he
was always the object. His greatest pleasure
was to stay at home with his wife and chil-
dren ; his only weaknesses were an inordinate
love of tobacco and a dread of the number 13.
According to all rules of vocal hygiene, smok-
ing ought to have ruined his voice, for he was
never without a lighted cigar, except when
singing, sleeping and eating ; but as he was still
singing at the age of sixty, we shall have to
write him down as an exception beyond the
law. Nor did the dreaded 13 ever seem to
work him serious injury.

Six daughters were the fruit of the mar-
riage, of whom three only lived to maturity.
One day, when Grisi was walking in the park
with them, she met a lord of high degree
whom she knew. He stopped and said,
jocosely : "These, madam, are, I suppose,
your little grisettes?" "Oh, no, sir! These
are my little marionettes."

For fifteen years Grisi and Mario sang only
in Europe. In 1842 they, with Albertazzi
and Tamburini, formed the first quartet to
sing Rossini's "Stabat Mater." Rubini's re-

104 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

tirement gave Mario ample scope for his tal-
ents, and no new prima donnas of power ap-
peared to imperil Grisi's supremacy ; but as
time went on they began to yearn for new
worlds to conquer, and in 1854 completed ar-
rangements for a visit to America, which had
recently shown itself so hospitable to Jenny
Lind and Sontag.

In August, 1854, they arrived in New York,
under contract for six months for the sum of
about $85,000. In September they opened
their season at Castle Garden with "Lucrezia
Borgia," best seats three dollars. In the sup-
porting company were Susini, an excellent
bass, and Barili, the mother of Adelina Patti.
The performance went off smoothly and the
company was accepted as thoroughly compe-
tent, but there was a coolness on the part of
the public, quite different from the hearty
welcome accorded to Jenny Lind and, after
her, almost as generously to Sontag.
"Norma," given in the course of the second
week, was received a little more cordially.

In October the company was engaged to in-
augurate the present Academy of Music on
the corner of Irving Place and Fourteenth
Street. October 2, 1854, was the date,
"Norma" the opera. The best seats were two
dollars. It would seem as if New York would
have been keen to hear a performance of one
of the most popular operas of the day by the

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI 105

best opera company that had ever come to
town, especially in a theatre as handsome and
commodious as it was new. But all signs
failed, and the two most famous singers of
Europe had to sing one of their favorite
operas to a half -empty house. Richard Grant
White, who was there, thought it, on the
whole, rather a dull evening ; Mario and Grisi
had passed their prime, both of them, he de-
cided, and had nothing striking or novel to
offer the American public.

The success of the season did not increase
as time went on, but there was a financial guar-
antee to ensure the completion of the tour.
The company visited other cities, but no de-
tailed account of the winter is available. One
amusing story, however, has survived, to the
effect that a performance of "Norma" was
given in Washington during a heavy rain-
storm, and that the roof was so leaky that
Norma (Grisi) had to clothe herself in a
heavy fur coat, while Pollione (Mario) war-
bled his loveliest beneath the shelter of a huge
coachman's umbrella. After seventy per-
formances, all told, Grisi and Mario returned
to Europe.

Twenty-five years of hard and continuous
service had by now decidedly impaired the
freshness of Grisi's voice, and Mario's powers,
too, were on the wane; it was time to think
of retirement. So they bought them a com-

106 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

fortable villa near Florence, in which to pass
their declining years. Rubini said, when he
retired: "It is time to retire, because it is
too soon," and never sang in public again.
But Grisi and Mario were less firm in their
resolution to withdraw. They had grown to
love the stage too well to be able now to resist
the call of the footlights and the craving for
the applause of the public; besides, although
they had made a great deal of money, they
were extravagant in their way of living and
always had hard work to keep their outgo
within the limits of their income.

So they continued to sing wherever they
saw a chance to turn an honest penny. In
1 86 1 Grisi signed an agreement with a man-
ager not to sing again in London for five years.
For a woman of her age, such a pledge seemed
tantamount to a final farewell, but in 1866
she was singing "Lucrezia" once more at Her
Majesty's Theatre. Her voice was gone, but
not her ambition and zeal. In 1869 she died
suddenly in Berlin, while Mario was singing
in St. Petersburg.

In 1872 Mario came again to the United
States to sing in concert. He was now old
and all but voiceless; the tour was a pitiful
failure. Poor and broken, he retired, first
to Paris, and then to Rome, where he died in
1883.

Although Grisi and Mario sang much too

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI IO7

long for the good of their reputations, the
very length of their careers serves as an in-
teresting link with a remote past. Many
elderly people still living heard in their youth
Grisi, the colleague of Pasta and Malibran,
and Mario, the immediate successor, almost
the contemporary, of Rubini.

There is no denying to Grisi a very high
place among the galaxy of prima donnas of
her era. She was inferior to Pasta in dra-
matic instinct, to Malibran in versatility and
spontaneity, to Sontag as a vocalist and mu-
sician; but her talents were, on the whole,
so considerable and so well balanced that her
achievements will bear comparison with those
of any singer in history.

The name of Mario, too, will always be
held in honorable memory. Inferior to Garcia
and Rubini in creative qualities, he became,
nevertheless, by virtue of his powers to charm
and delight, the legitimate heir to their laurels
and prolonged worthily the traditions that they
had created. The sun itself set with Rubini ;
Mario was the mellow afterglow, which is
quite as lovely in its way as the radiance of
day itself. With Mario the line of great lyric
tenors came to an end.

Between 1825 and 1850, no bass in Europe,
except Lablache, was held in higher esteem
than Antonio Tamburini. He was born in

108 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Faenza in 1800. His father was a band-
master, who aimed to make a horn-player
of him, but his aptitude for singing an-
nounced itself early and made him, at twelve
years of age, a member of the opera chorus,
which took part also in the choral music of
the church.

The boy had many opportunities to hear the
great singers of the day, and profited by them
so well that at eighteen he was engaged to
sing bass parts in the opera in Bologna. This
led to an engagement at Naples, which, in turn,
paved the way for Florence, Venice, Trieste,
Rome, Milan and Vienna. At Vienna he and
Rubini were awarded the Order of the
Saviour, an honor hitherto granted to no for-
eigner but the Duke of Wellington.

Tamburini's voice was a noble basso
cantante of two evenly developed octaves, and
of such extraordinary flexibility as to win for
him the title of "the bass Rubini." We may
judge of its power from the fact that it was
able to hold its own with "the human
ophicleide," Lablache, in the popular duet for
two basses in "I Puritani." Rossini, writing to
a friend in Italy about the first performance
of this opera, said: "I need not describe to
you the duo for two basses — the sound of it
must surely have reached your ears."

Tamburini was a handsome man and an
excellent, though not an inspired, actor. He

GRISI, MARIO AND TAMBURINI IO9

was chiefly celebrated as a singer of Rossini's
music, but he was almost equally successful in
other operas of the repertory, including "Don
Giovanni."

As an instance of his versatility, an amus-
ing story is told. He was singing in Palermo
during the Carnival. The theatre was full of
merrymakers, much more intent on making a
noise themselves than on listening to music
made by others. Tamburini's first at-
tempts to make himself heard were vain.
Suddenly he ceased to use his natural
voice and began to sing in a falsetto
so shrill and clear that it surmounted
the racket made by the roysterers. The crowd
was delighted with the novelty and received
the prima donna on her entrance with such
an uproar of enthusiasm that she lost her
nerve completely, rushed out of the back door
of the theatre, and was seen no more that
night. The manager was in despair — no prima
donna, no opera ! But Tamburini was equal
to the occasion. Clothing himself in as much
of the soprano's costume as he could find and
squeeze into, he returned to the stage, where
he sang all her music in falsetto and played
her part with mirth-provoking fervor. He
played and sang both parts in a duet for so-
prano and bass. To cap the climax, in re-
sponse to the demands of the audience, now
quite hysterical with delight, he executed a
spirited dance with the corps de ballet.

IIO SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In 1832 he was heard for the first time in
London and Paris, and for a number of years
was an important member of the "Old Guard."
In 1840 the London manager, in a futile at-
tempt to break the power of this coterie, did
not engage Tamburini — an omission that re-
sulted in a series of riots and the re-
engagement of the favorite bass for the fol-
lowing season.

Like Grisi and Mario, Tamburini continued
to sing long after his voice had lost its beauty.
In 1852 he was singing in London with only
an echo of his former sonorous tones. Paris
heard him, too, at that time, and Holland.
In 1859 he sang in London for the last time.
He made his home in Nice, and died there
in 1876.

Some Conclusions

N selecting for review the lives of
a few of the famous singers of
the nineteenth century, I have lim-
ited myself to the group of mem-
orable artists that shared with Rossini, Bel-
lini and Donizetti the operatic glories of their
epoch. Lack of space has forbidden me to
do more than refer to Alboni, whose contralto
voice may well have been the most perfect
of the whole century, and I have not even
mentioned Pisaroni, another contralto, whom
Chorley named as worthy of a place in his
ideal quartet, in company with Pasta, Duprez
and Lablache. Then there were Persiani, the
most accomplished coloratura singer of the
period, for whom Donizetti wrote the part of
Lucia, and Ronconi, too, the baritone whose
artistic quality made one oblivious to the
mediocrity of his voice. But, without fuller or
further reference to these four worthy sing-
ers, we shall find that the careers of those
I have written about furnish ample material
from which to draw some interesting and
instructive conclusions.
in

112 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

How did these singers compare with those
of our own time? Were their voices better
in quality, or better trained in technique?
Were they better musicians or more resource-
ful actors? Such questions as these are un-
answerable, but of one thing we may be sure:
the qualities that made these old singers fa-
mous in their day and generation, would, if
they were living and singing now, make them
just as famous as they were then. We could
count upon Garcia and Malibran for a per-
formance of "Carmen" as thrilling as any we
have ever had in America. Wrhat an Isolde
would Pasta make, and that Lablache died too
soon to sing Verdi's "Falstaff" deprives the
world of what unquestionably would have
been one of the most perfect impersonations
in all operatic history!

As I have said, the operas in which these
old singers achieved their celebrity are all,
except one, dead or moribund, "But in Music
we know how fashions end" and, likely
enough, in the year 2000 the repertory of
1900 will be in like state, without in the least
diminishing thereby the great names left be-
hind them by Lehmann and Jean de Reszke,
who artistically are the lineal descendants of
Pasta and Garcia. Rossini and his school
understood thoroughly the possibilities of the
human voice and were in considerable part in-
strumental in forming a method of singing

SOME CONCLUSIONS 113

founded upon principles that are just as
sound and admirable to-day as they were
eighty years ago. Lili Lehmann mastered
these principles in her youth, and so late as
1899 sang Norma with the same noble ar-
tistry that illuminated her Isolde. Jean de
Reszke, too, surpassed all other Wagnerian
tenors by virtue of the vocal means that he
owed to his knowledge of bel canto.

The treatment of the human voice as a
solo instrument for the interpretation of art
music dates back only to the end of the six-
teenth century, the birth-time of opera, and
from that time down to our own we shall find
the history of singing closely interwoven with
that of opera. All the greatest singers have
made their names in opera chiefly, and have
devoted themselves to concert singing inci-
dentally only. We know very little about
methods of singing previous to 1700, but the
ever-growing popularity of opera has pro-
duced since that date a voluminous literature,
which furnishes us with an interesting, though
tantalizingly incomplete, knowledge of the
subject.

Since 1700 the art of singing has reached
two climaxes. The date of the first of these
may be fixed about 1740, when Handel's
vogue as an operatic composer was at its
height. Opera then had drifted far away
from the spirit of drama and had crystallized

114 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

into a conventional form of lyric expression.
The singer had nothing to do but sing; as
Victor Maurel puts it, "the singer was not
required to render the sentiments of the
dramatis personce with verisimilitude ; all that
was demanded of him was harmonious sounds,
the bel canto." Of this school of singing
Farinelli, Senesino, Cuzzoni and Pacchiarotti
were typical and in them vocal technique and
skill in phrasing must often have touched per-
fection itself.

The second climactic point was reached
about a century after the first — 1835, the
birth-year of "I Puritani," marks, perhaps, the
time when the modern school of bel canto
was at the very zenith of its excellence. The
singer was now responsible for something be-
sides the perfect emission of his voice; he
was expected to interpret dramatically, as well
as musically. Such librettos as those of
"Otello," "Norma" and "Lucrezia Borgia"
required of the singer a substantial minimum
of skill in the portrayal of human emotions,
and the public estimate of the value of an
operatic artist was much influenced by his
dramatic competence. In fact, the success of
many singers, including Pasta and Pauline
Garcia, was largely due to their capacity as
actors, which outweighed their vocal short-
comings.

These increasing histrionic demands might

SOME CONCLUSIONS H5

easily have lowered the vocal standard had not
the composer borne in mind the novel condi-
tions. In the eighteenth century the singer
had been allowed an almost unlimited license
in the matter of ornamentation; the melody
was only a skeleton, which the singer might
dress with such embellishments as his own
taste or fancy might dictate. It is told of
Garcia that he disapproved of a melody that
had been assigned to him in a new opera and
absolutely refused to rehearse it, saying that
there need be no uneasiness on that score, be-
cause he should be quite ready with it at
the first performance. Finally, when the time
came, he substituted a melody, entirely his
own, which harmonized perfectly with the
accompaniment composed for the original
melody. Such effrontery would, of course, be
simply impossible under modern conditions.

Rossini was the first composer to prescribe
the notes and ornaments exactly as he wished
to have them sung, but he was, none the less,
an opportunist, as well as a man of genius,
and neither he nor Bellini nor Donizetti ever
wrote anything that could overtax the vocal
powers of their singers. The orchestra, then
a much smaller body of instruments than now,
was the loyal, self -obliterating follower of the
voice, and never, as in the later Verdi and
Wagner, the jealous and aggressive rival. In
their mutual relations the voice always took

Il6 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

precedence. Furthermore, the opera houses
built before 1850 were less spacious and less
richly decorated and upholstered than those
of the present day. Altogether, all the con-
ditions for an unstrained emission of the voice
were so favorable that Mr. W. J. Henderson,
an authority on such matters, is of the opin-
ion that the old singers employed habitually
a much smaller volume of tone than that used
to-day. If Mr. Henderson's theory is cor-
rect, we have ground for thinking that the
lowering of vocal standards during the past
fifty years is due to the attempt on the part
of the singer to increase the size of his voice
in direct ratio with the increase in the size
of orchestras and auditoriums.

We may, if we will, characterize the operas
of Rossini and his immediate successors as
silly, insincere, old-fashioned, or obsolete, but
we cannot deny that they gave satisfaction to
a generation that knew not only the music
of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, but
also the dramatic art of Talma, Kemble and
Siddons. The fact that so sophisticated a
public as that of Paris during the reign of
Louis Philippe considered the operas of Ros-
sini, Bellini and Donizetti fit mediums for the
indisputable talents of Pasta, the Garcias,
Duprez and Lablache counsels us to accord to
these old and mostly-forgotten operas some-
thing of the reverence that we hold for

SOME CONCLUSIONS WJ

the great artists for whom they were
written.

Certain it is that Tamagno and Maurel
never stirred their public more profoundly in
Verdi's "Otello" than did Garcia and Mali-
bran theirs sixty years earlier in Rossini's
version of the same tragic story; nor did
Lehmann or Ternina arouse the sympathies
of their hearers more surely in "Tristan und
Isolde" than did Pasta move her audiences in
Mayer's "Medea." The combination of qual-
ities that makes an artist great is rarely to be
found, but it is quite unrelated to time or
place. Pasta would have been a great artist
if she had been born a hundred years later,
and, equally, Ternina's splendid gifts would
have been recognized and admired a century
ago.

But what are the qualities that go to make
a great singer in this or any generation? Dif-
ficult as it is to answer this question con-
clusively, we have enough data before us to
form a safe opinion as to how the various
members of one group of famous singers
achieved their renown.

Was it Rossini, or was it some earlier au-
thority that asserted for the first time that
the three requisites for success as a singer
are Voice, Voice and — Voice? Whoever it
was, the man uttered at most no more than a
half-truth. Catalani was a beautiful woman

1 1 8 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

with a beautiful voice and nothing more,
while Pasta was a plain woman with an un-
tuneful voice, but Pasta is ranked much
higher than Catalani among the world's great
singers. Maria and Pauline Garcia and even
Jenny Lind possessed voices not more beauti-
ful than many another. Rubini in his early
days was not thought worthy of even a place
in the chorus and Duprez was more than
thirty before he won recognition in his native
city, Paris.

As every singing teacher knows, mere
beauty of voice is by no means rare ; what is
rare is the effective will to develop the voice
to its utmost capacity. Natural beauty of voice
is often even a detriment to its possessor, for
it may tempt him to rely on nature, rather
than on art, for his victories. The solidest
foundation of all for a career is an artistic
ambition that will not be denied. This ambi-
tion includes the qualities of self-denial, pa-
tience, and industry ; it needs to be guided
by a keen intelligence and fortified by a sound,
vigorous body; then, if it be furnished, too,
with a voice of good quality and power, we
have the wherewithal to build a great career.

The early struggles of Pasta, Rubini and
Duprez offer a precious lesson to young sing-
ers that believe the world cruel in refusing
to accept them immediately at their own valua-
tion. Even those of their colleagues to whom

SOME CONCLUSIONS HO,

recognition came speedily (excepting Cata-
lani, whose attitude toward her art was in
no way commendable) made and sustained
their reputations by virtue of their unswerv-
ing devotion to high artistic ideals. The at-
tainment of every height was but the point of
departure for a loftier flight. Sontag, after
twenty years of retirement, won a new celeb-
rity in an entirely new repertory. Malibran
was always learning new roles and perfecting
herself in those she had already sung. Jenny
Lind, to use Paderewski's phrase about him-
self, stood in humility and reverence before
God and her art. I have spoken more than
once of Pasta's indomitable will and, as for
Garcia, there never was a man so ready to
undertake any new labor, no matter how
onerous, in order to broaden his artistic scope.
Even Lablache, the perfect artist, to whom
all gifts had been given, was as conscientious
in the preparation and performance of his
roles as if he were an unrecognized novice.
With such examples as these before us, we
shall not be far from right if we change
the recipe for success from one of having
into one of doing — "Voice, Voice and —
Voice" into "Work, Work and— Work."

It is worth noting how completely ready
these singers of the past were for stage careers.
A number of them were, so to speak, born on
the stage. Sontag, Malibran and Jenny Lind

120 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

appeared publicly in children's parts almost
as soon as they could toddle, and all of the
women were full-fledged prima donnas before
they reached the age of twenty. Rubini, Du-
prez and Mario were men grown when their
success came, but Garcia, Nourrit, Tamburini
and Lablache were still boys in their 'teens.
Nowadays training for opera begins only
when a young man or woman has shown un-
mistakable signs of having an exceptional
voice, and more often than not there has been
no general musical education at all. Such a
situation is not altogether different from that
of a young man who, though without musical
aptitude, should decide to become a profes-
sional violinist, simply because he has inher-
ited a Guarnerius violin.

All of the singers in our group, except Cata-
lani, the unambitious, and Mario, the gifted
amateur, were thoroughly versed in everything
connected with the operatic stage. Several
of them were capable instrumentalists, sev-
eral were skilful with the pencil, several were
respectable composers, one, even, was a poet.
All of them, except Catalani and Rubini, were
competent actors ; some of them might well
have made names for themselves in the spoken
drama. In our own time singers are rarely so
completely equipped for their work. The old
way certainly produced a high standard of all-
around excellence.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 121

This long and thorough-going intimacy
with their profession developed in the old
singers a trait, the importance of which can-
not be too highly recommended to the student
and the young artist — self-dependence. I do
not underrate the value of preparatory study
under the guidance of teachers ; indeed, no
singer ever reaches the point where he can
dispense altogether with criticism from others.
The voice is so much a part of one's self that
one cannot listen to it objectively, and objec-
tive criticism is what every singer needs from
time to time as long as he sings. But students
are much too apt not to rely enough on their
own initiative and to believe that great artists
can be turned out ready made from the studio
of a good teacher. The untried novice who
feels that he is already competent to assume
first roles in New York or Berlin or Paris is
met with too frequently in musical circles.
This belief is fraught with danger. All of the
old artists mastered their art through practis-
ing it. They were trained first as musicians,
learning even as children something of the
proper use of the voice in the chorus and in
church choirs. Then, as their voices ma-
tured, they took small solo parts in unimport-
ant companies, advancing, according to their
fitness, until they were assigned first parts in
the large theatres. By some such route as this
nearly all of the world's great singers have

122 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

journeyed from the lowlands of obscurity to
the heights of fame.

From the records of the past, as well as
observations of the present, I am disposed
to assert in a general way that the term of a
singer's professional life is two score years and
ten. Singers themselves are the poorest judges
of the proper moment for their own retire-
ment, because they cannot hear the ravages
that time has made in their voices. They can-
not accept the fact that, though the intellectual
mastery of their art is on the increase, their
physical resources may be diminishing. Cata-
lani, Grisi, Garcia, Mario and Tamburini all
continued to sing after they had past the half-
century mark, although their voices had suf-
fered a noticeable deterioration. Pasta's
voice had gone at forty, Duprez's at forty-
five. Pauline Garcia retired at the age of
forty for reasons unknown ; Jenny Lind with-
drew even earlier. That Lablache was able
to give pleasure with his singing till he was
sixty was probably owing to the fact that the
bass voice is the most durable of all voices.
Rubini retired at forty-eight, his voice already
somewhat impaired. Singing belongs to
youth. When the feeling and the physique
of youth are gone the only pleasure that sing-
ing can give to the hearer is either that of
reminiscence, the echo of sounds heard on
an earlier day, or that of admiration for

SOME CONCLUSIONS 123

mastery over an instrument no longer
perfect.

The more we study the history of singers
the more clearly we perceive that there is one
thing that a singer must possess if he is to
travel far in his career. Alone it can do but
little for him, yet without it the greatest gifts
come to nothing. He must have vigorous
health. He needs a body capable of resisting
severe physical and nervous strain, of adapt-
ing itself easily to changes of temperature,
and of quick recuperation after fatigue. He
needs a vigor that always ''bids not sit nor
stand, but go." It was this inward flame of
energy that made so fruitful the life of the
elder Garcia, that enabled Maria Garcia to
crowd a repertory of thirty-five operas into
ten years on the stage, and that gave to
Pauline Garcia and to the younger Manuel
respectively ninety and one hundred full, ac-
tive years. Even Sontag, who appeared so
frail, had an unsuspected supply of endur-
ance to draw upon, or she never could have
kept the youthful freshness of her voice
through forty-five years of use. Operatic
work makes such great drafts on the strength
of the singer that none but the rugged can
hope to succeed in it, and this is quite
as true to-day as it was in the days
of the giant Lablache and the dynamic
Garcias.

124 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The question of health brings us naturally
to that of self-denial, the power to eschew all
indulgences and pursuits that weaken the fiber
of the body and divert the mind from the main
business in hand, which is the perfecting of
one's art. Art is a jealous mistress, who
can be wooed, won and held by unswerving
and single-minded devotion only. Self-denial
means character, a quality not often enough
credited to the account of singers.

The popular idea is that life behind the
operatic scenes is looser than elsewhere. This
may be true in the case of artists not of the
highest standing, but is not true of the very
best. Artists live in history mostly by their
public achievements and it is, therefore, pos-
sible that in the private lives of those I have
been writing about there were scandals. The
only scandal that I have unearthed is that of
Malibran's liaison with de Beriot, but even
this irregularity is easily condoned. Mali-
bran, while still a young girl, was married,
probably against her will and certainly under
false pretences, to a man more than twice her
age, for whom she never could have had any
love and whose conduct soon made even re-
spect impossible. A few years later she met
her real mate in de Beriot, whom she married
formally as soon as the courts released her
from the earlier tie. No shadow of scandal
hangs over the story of the other Garcias and

SOME CONCLUSIONS 12$

an atmosphere of blissful domesticity per-
vades such records as remain of the conjugal
experiences of Grisi and Mario, Lablache,
Jenny Lind, Sontag and Catalani. Of the
private lives of the others little is known.
Whether it was chance, expediency or moral
principle that underlay such respectability I
cannot say; but the fact remains that the
entire group seems to have maintained a
standard of private conduct that would be
considered exemplary in any society.

Opera written by Italians and sung by sing-
ers trained according to the Italian traditions,
even when they were not Italian by birth,
practically monopolized the operatic field dur-
ing the first half of the nineteenth century;
the influence of Wagner, Gounod and even
Meyerbeer, Rossini's contemporary, belongs to
the latter half. The best singing of to-day is
derived from the earlier period through the
medium of such teachers as Manuel Garcia, Jr.,
Marchesi, Stockhausen, Lamperti, delle Sedie
and Vannucini, who in their turn were nurtured
in the school of Sontag, Rubini and Lablache.
What is best in vocal technique we owe, there-
fore, to the Italians ; to the French we owe that
part of technique that concerns "I'art de bien
dire" ; to the Germans we owe nothing. Why
such bad singing should come from Germany,
the most profoundly musical of all nations, is
a puzzling question, but it must be admitted

126 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

that very few German singers ever acquire
the art of bel canto. Sontag, Lehmann and
Hempel shine as brilliant exceptions from this
generalization.

Unfortunately, Italy of the twentieth cen-
tury appears to have forgotten the traditions
of its noble past. The operas of the later
Verdi, Ponchielli and Mascagni have bred too
many leather-lunged singers, who are at
their happiest only when most vociferous.
Wagner, too, with his mighty orchestra, has
invaded the musical precincts once sacred to
the dulcet harmonies of Rossini and Bellini
and engendered a type of singer who, unmind-
ful of the example set by Lehmann and Jean
de Reszke, believes that the only way to in-
terpret Wagner's music is to shout it. The
result of all this has been the sacrifice of
vocal control, the very essence of bcl canto
for the sake of the big tone. Even Caruso, the
splendor of whose voice surpasses anything
heard by our generation, has lost quite as
much as he has gained through his determina-
tion to acquire the big tone. The acquisition
is now complete and it is impossible to with-
hold one's admiration from the clarion tones
that ring out so true and free, but to many
that recall the fine restraint that used to ren-
der his delivery of "Spirto gentil" and "Una
furtiva Lagrima" so eloquent, the loss in
sweetness outweighs the gain in power.

SOME CONCLUSIONS 12J

But we need not despond or be hopeless for
better things in the future. Lord Mount-
Edgecumbe, an English connaisseur in music,
writing ninety years ago, wagged his head as
despairingly over the noisy, unmelodious,
iconoclastic operas of Rossini, which he held
to be a sad deterioration from the pure and
noble style of Sarti and Cimarosa, as the crit-
ics fifty years later wagged their heads over
the degenerate Wagner. With his and many
another similar example before us, I, for one,
shall not proclaim that the true art of singing
has come, or ever will come, to a full stop.
The success of John McCormack, the Irish
tenor, whose lovely art, which embodies the
principles of bel canto as they were practised
by Garcia, Rubini and Mario, appeals to the
sophisticated as well as to the popular taste,
goes to prove that the worship of the big
tone has not exterminated our power to enjoy
the controlled tone.

The art of singing is the art of expressing
the emotions musically by means of the voice,
and the voice that is able to express truth-
fully through its tones the greatest variety of
emotions is the greatest voice. There are emo-
tions that require for their expression a mel-
low, restrained tone ; there are those that re-
quire an explosion of tone ; and there are,
besides these, countless tone-qualities, all of
which enrich the capacity of the voice

128 SINGERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

for emotional expression. Rubini seems to
have possessed a greater capacity for such ex-
pression than any other singer of the nine-
teenth century. The greatest singer of the
twentieth century will be one who, a master of
bel canto like Rubini, can sound all the notes
within the scale of human emotion.

INSTRUCTION BOOKS

THE VOICE

Bates, James, VOICE CULTURE FOR CHIL-
DREN

Part I. Instructions 75

" II. Exercises with Pianoforte Accpt. .75
" III. Appendix, 2-pt. Studies, with

Accpt 30

Broekhoven, J. van, EXERCISES

Book 1, Elementary Soprano or Tenor . .50

" 2, " Alto 50

" 3, " Bass 50

" 4, Advanced Soprano or Tenor . .50

" 5, " Alto 50

" 6, " Bass 50

Concone's LESSONS. New Edition

50 Lessons for the Medium part of the

Voice 75

25 Lessons. A sequel to the above . . .75
15 Vocalises. A sequel to the above 25

Lessons 75

15 Vocalises for Contralto or Mezzo-

Soprano 75

40 Lessons for Contralto 75

40 Lessons for Bass or Baritone ... .75
Hall, Walter Henry, THE ESSENTIALS OF
CHOIR BOY TRAINING

Cloth 1 -oo

Henschel, G., PROGRESSIVE STUDIES FOR
THE VOICE, with Pianoforte Accompani-
ment. In two parts.
Part I. Studies in Sustained Singing.
Part II. Studies in Florid Singing.

Part I, High Voice 1.25

Medium Voice 1.25

" Low Voice 1.25

Part II, High Voice 1.25

Medium Voice 1.25

Low Voice 1.25

Higgs, James, A COLLECTION OF TWO-
PART SOLFEGGI IN THE PRINCIPAL
MAJOR KEYS

(Novello's Music Primers No. 51) . . .50

Howard, F. E., CHILD VOICE IN SINGING,
THE

Cloth -75

Howard, F. E., HANDBOOK ON THE TRAIN-
ING OF THE CHILD VOICE IN SING-
ING 35

Hulbert, H. H., BREATHING FOR VOICE
PRODUCTION
(Novello's Music Primers No. 63) . . .75
Mann, Richard, A MANUAL OF SINGING FOR
THE USE OF CHOIR TRAINERS AND
SCHOOLMASTERS
New edition with additions by J. Stainer .50
Martin, G. C, THE ART OF TRAINING
CHOIR BOYS
(Novello's Music Primers No. 39) • • i-5n
Martin, G. C, THE ART OF TRAINING
CHOIR BOYS (The Exercises Only)
For the use of boys. (Novello's Music

Primers No. 39a) 5<>

McNaught, W. G., SIGHT-SINGING STUDIES
STAFF NOTATION
(Movable Dob.) 3 Books, each . . .15

Randegger, Alberto, SINGING

(Novello's Music Primers No. 5) . . . 1.50
Stainer, J., CHORAL SOCIETY VOCALIZA-
TION
Instructions and Exercises in Voice Train-
ing. (Novello's Music Primers No. 50) 1.00

Or, in four parts, each 25

Stainer, J., THE EXERCISES IN THE

"CHORAL SOCIETY VOCALIZATION"
PRIMER
Adapted and arranged for the use of
choirs and classes of female voices, by
Arthur W. Marchant. (Novello's Music

Primers No. 50a) 75

Stubbs, G. Edward, HOW TO SING THE

CHORAL SERVICE

A Manual of Intoning for clergymen . 1.00

Stubbs, G. Edward, PRACTICAL HINTS ON

THE TRAINING OF CHOIR BOYS

With an introduction by the Rev. J. S. B.

Hodges, D.D 75

Stubbs, G. Edward, THE ADULT MALE ALTO,
OR COUNTER-TENOR VOICE .75

The PSYCHOLOGY of SINGING

A Rational Method of Voice Cul-
ture based on a Scientific Analysis
of all Systems, Ancient and Modern

BY

DAVID C. TAYLOR
Cloth. Price $ 1 .50 net. By mail $ 1 .62

Richard Aldrich in the New York Times

Mr. Taylor has produced here a remarkable book,
that deserves to be pondered by everybody who is
concerned with singing, either as a student or as a
teacher. He has acquaintance with the most im-
portant of modern theories, and he examines them
with thoroughness and merciless logic. The result
leaves little for their support. Mr. Taylor's book is
daring ; it might almost be called revolutionary. He
has presented his line of argument with much skill,
clearly and in a manner to carry conviction.

W. J. Henderson in the New York Sun

In his "Psychology of Singing" David C. Taylor
has made a book that teachers of singing will have
to read whether they like it or not. He has examined
the basis of that modern method of teaching singing
which attempts to instruct pupils in the intelligent
operation of the muscles of their vocal mechanism
and has pronounced it utterly and fundamentally
vicious.

It would do many opera singers good if they
would take to heart Mr. Taylor's thoughts on the
office of the aesthetic powers in conceiving the
beautiful tone.

It is one of the most original and stimulating books
ever written on the art of singing, and it ought to
do a world of good.

The H. W. GRAY COMPANY
2 West 45th St., - - New York

SOLE AGENTS FOR

NOVELLO & CO. LTD,

JUST PUBLISHED

Self Help for Singers

A Manual for Self Instruction in

Voice Culture based on the

Old Italian Method.

A sequel to The Psychology of Singing

By
DAVID TAYLOR

Cloth Price One Dollar

The "Psychology of Singing" established the
principle of imitation as the sole basis of the old
Italian method. "Self Help" is a simple com-
prehensive system of voice culture by imitation
arranged for the student's use in self instruction.

THE H. W. GRAY CO.

2 West 45th Street, New York

Sole Agents for

NOVELLO & CO., LTD.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES

THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

NOV 2 9 1950

9! ;

JAti 7 V355

JUL 8 1984 -.-

..

"5
ML 3 0 T.97D

Form I, 9-15m-3,'34

OCT 2 9 WO

.RtO:u MU&U

FEB 26 197^

MP'S) WUS-UB
«.*" 1 4 1978

m 1* 1978

n. Loan
<§§£

UNIVERSITY OF fALIFORNIA

AT

LOS ANGELES

L 007 009 912 2

MUSR5

-!2«ARY

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

AA 000 747 017 2